Animoca Brands Among Backers in $13M Raise for Revolving Games

Rockstar Games’ co-founder adds to team’s war chest for Web3 game development

share

key takeaways

  • $2.4 billion has been invested in GameFi in 2022
  • Web3 devs “should look to build on what has worked for over a decade in Web2,” said CEOs

Venture capital money continues to pour into GameFi as investors remain bullish on blockchain gaming during the bear market. 

The latest Web3 game publisher to complete a $25 million seed round is San Francisco-based Revolving Games.

The company announced on Friday that it raised over $13.2 million from Pantera Capital, Animoca Brands, Polygon and Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser.

Previous backers including Dapper Labs, Permanens Capital Partners, Kenetic, Sarmayacar and DWeb3 Capital invested $12 million earlier this year.

The funding will be used over the next two years to help scale existing recognized franchises, as well as to develop original IP and AAA quality games.

Over $12 million has already been spent to develop publishing tools that enable Web3 games to launch faster and more efficiently, within the last two and a half years, according to a statement.  

Brothers and co-CEOs of Revolving Games, Ammar and Saad Zaeem, told Blockworks that the gaming industry has “largely flipped from what was successful in Web2 free-to-play to gated access requirements,” such as paywalls and subscriptions. 

Players should first invest their time, “ultimately deciding whether or not we’ve provided the experience they were looking for, before committing their hard earned dollars into supporting our games,” the executives said. 

When asked what it may take to win over gamers skeptical of crypto, the CEOs said that “conversion strategies, while different in Web3, should look to build on what has worked for over a decade in Web2” while also focusing on building “seriously fun and lasting gameplay.” 

This announcement comes on the heels of a partnership with blockchain gaming platform Gala Games and NBCUniversal, and the reveal of Revolving Games’ first strategy-based massively multiplayer online (MMO) title — Battlestar Galactica. 

The gaming studio plans to reveal details for a second game, Skyborne Legacy, a role-playing game (RPG) to be deployed on the Polygon network, later this fall.

Animoca Brands, an investor in this latest round, has become one of the biggest funders in the GameFi space, backing over 50 discrete GameFi projects this year alone.

Asia’s largest blockchain investment firm also recently secured $100 million from Temasek to fund its metaverse ambitions.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

Ethena Labs is leaping from its flagship synthetic dollar, USDe, to a full product suite—USDtb, iUSDe, and the Arbitrum-based Converge Chain—designed to marry crypto-native yields with TradFi-grade compliance. Our analysis shows how expanding into CME, ETF options, and tokenized Treasuries could lift protocol revenue from sub-$500 million in a bear case to several billion dollars if favorable regulation and institutional adoption align.

article-image

Bitcoin is still rising, 11 years after the documentary film The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin

article-image

Arch Labs CEO told Blockworks that the team plans to launch a native token, but declined to give details

article-image

CEO Mike Silagadze tells Blockworks that the US is “open for business” and why its DeFi bank offering is the first of many

article-image

Doing one thing well and leaving everything else out is often what disruptive technologies do best

article-image

Why an analyst is kicking off COIN coverage with “buy” rating