EVE Online Creator Is Making a Triple-A Web3 Game

One of gaming’s most respected studios is developing a flagship Web3 title, and they’ve raised $40 million to pull it off

article-image

EVE Online Drifter(CC BY-NC-SA 2.0); Source: Bryan Ward/Flickr, modified by Blockworks

share

EVE Online creator CCP Games is going Web3, having raised $40 million to develop a blockchain-integrated triple-A spinoff set within its sandbox sci-fi universe.

CCP Games said the game will build upon its blockchain-related findings from its research and development team.

“With advancements made within blockchain, we can forge a new universe deeply imbued with our expertise in player agency and autonomy,” CCP Games head Hilmar Veigar Pétursson said in a statement, published under a “Project Awakening” domain name.

While the Icelandic studio’s Web3 title — currently unnamed — will take place within the EVE Online universe, it will be standalone. Crypto-forward venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the round, with participation from Makers Fund and BITKRAFT Ventures.

Key game elements will utilize smart contracts with attention paid to composability, open third-party development and persistence of data, CCP Games said. 

It’s unclear whether the title will interact with public blockchain networks like Ethereum, as is the case with metaverse offerings such as Decentraland and The Sandbox. Blockworks has reached out for comment.

In any case, a venerable studio in CCP Games embracing Web3 is a milestone for the budding entertainment sector.

EVE Online, published 20 years ago, has long been a staple of the massively-multiplayer genre, still averaging more than 273,000 daily players with a total base of around 9.5 million accounts. Its grand-scale battles have become fixtures of gaming history and internet lore.

A fraction of that player base could present a considerable boon for blockchain gaming, which sees considerably less user stats in recent times.

“It’s a great sentiment, in general, having a serious team backed by a respectable firm for the Web3 gaming market,” Andrii Yasinetsky CEO and co-founder of NFT data analytics firm Mnemonic told Blockworks. 

Blockchain gaming could bring regular users to Web3 and attract further investment for other developers looking to build similar products, Yasinetsky said.

An executive at Fortnite maker Epic Games recently noted nearly 20 third-party, crypto-enabled games are expected to hit its online store over the next year.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

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 […]

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.

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.

recent research

morpho 2 graphic.png

Research

Utilizing a ‘DeFi Mullet’ approach, Coinbase’s Bitcoin-backed loans integration with Morpho demonstrates a powerful blueprint for CEXs to monetize dormant assets by expanding adoption of wrapped products (cbBTC, USDC) while also supporting native and/or preferred DeFi ecosystems (Base) which can further lead to downstream growth in onchain liquidity and increased utilization of the related assets.

article-image

The firm behind Helium announced that it reached a settlement with the SEC

article-image

SKALE’s Jack O’Holleran said that certain metrics are becoming more important to gauging the success of a project

article-image

Mary Gooneratne, co-founder of Solana DeFi startup Loopscale, wants to give blockchain borrow-lend a facelift

article-image

BlackRock, Fidelity and others had their spot ETH EFTs approved, and we may see more crypto products come to market

article-image

Inflation reached a five-month low in March, but 10% blanket levy may impact prices

article-image

The administration announced a pause on reciprocal tariffs, but the bond market shows signs of trouble