Despite huge initial investments from companies around the world, it seems like Metaverse games are currently struggling to retain players. The report comes from Coin Desk, who recently put together their findings. NFTs were also discussed in some detail too.

According to the report, Metaverse game Axie Infinity saw a daily average user drop of 30% to around 107,000 players now. Another title, The Sandbox, has also fallen by 29% to around 1,180 players.

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Coin Desk also points out that the numbers of daily players for Metaverse games are misleading. As stated, while some of those numbers are actual players, the others are “employees of guilds playing the game to earn yield for investors.”

“There is currently no organic engagement that retains players in the game, unlike traditional games like Fortnite, GTA, Candy Crush, where players are willing to pay to keep playing,” said Blockchain Gaming Analyst DeFi Vader when discussing Axie Infinity.

A major reason why players are more hesitant to engage with these titles is the integration of NFTs (or non-fungible tokens). Most mainstream players will tend to avoid projects that push the technology, as it’s primarily seen as a pay-to-win mechanic and non-essential to gaming experiences as a whole.

“First, the ability to purchase NFTs or in-game currency effectively creates pay-to-win game mechanics, a quality that most major franchises and successful games avoid,” said crypto research firm Messari.

Coin Desk also cites Ubisoft’s failed NFT project Ubisoft Quartz (first implemented on Ghost Recon Breakpoint, which ceased its development earlier this week) as one of the examples of mainstream gaming companies completely failing to enter the crypto space and implement them successfully. Despite the negative backlash, Ubisoft is still pushing NFTs and plan to integrate them in future titles as well.

Source: Coin Desk