NFT Game Pixelmon Stops Development and Lays Off Employees
NFT game Pixelmon announced on its official Discord channel that the company has halted all game development work, and relevant employees have been laid off, marking the official end of a project that raised approximately $70 million.
Pixelmon raised about $70 million through NFT minting in February 2022, using a Dutch auction with a starting price of 3 ETH (approximately $8,100); the unveiling of the artwork on OpenSea after minting faced strong backlash from the community, with many buyers believing the pixel-style NFTs received were severely inconsistent with the promotion, and some angrily labeled the project as a "scam."
Project founder Syber publicly admitted at the time that "the OpenSea reveal was a terrible mistake," emphasizing that the NFT images "could be updated" and promised that the raised funds would be used for game development, with an internal test version to be launched within the year (2022); however, the internal testing plan was subsequently delayed to the first quarter of 2023, with the full game version's target pushed to the end of 2023.
At the end of 2022, Web3 venture studio LiquidX acquired a 60% stake in the Pixelmon project, with co-founder Giulio Xiloyannis appointed as CEO to lead the reconstruction. The team revamped the previously criticized rough pixel modeling, upgrading to detailed 3D art, and planned to incorporate virtual land NFTs, utility tokens, and governance tokens; however, the classically mocked character "Kevin" unexpectedly gained popularity, leading the team to intentionally retain its original low-poly style.
Despite undergoing a team overhaul and art redesign, the core game has never been launched as scheduled, and there have been no significant updates disclosed in the following years; now, the company has announced a complete halt to development and team layoffs via a Discord announcement. It has been over four and a half years since the initial $70 million minting, and the project has never delivered the promised complete game product.
For early minters, this means that the Pixelmon series NFTs they hold have completely lost any "future in-game utility value". The secondary market had already been declining due to multiple project delays, and the official announcement of development cessation is likely to further depress the liquidity and price of existing holdings; LiquidX, as the later entrant holding a 60% stake, will see its initial investment essentially go to zero with the project's termination, becoming the last party to bear the burden in this over $70 million fundraising effort.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
The minting of Pixelmon in February 2022 is one of the most representative cases of "high fundraising, low delivery" at the end of the NFT bull market—at that time, the project touted itself as "the first AAA NFT game" and raised about $70 million through Dutch auction without a playable demo. The quality of the artwork post-minting was severely inconsistent with the promotion, forcing the founder to publicly apologize. This path of "first raising funds through concepts, then being exposed for not delivering" is highly similar to the collapse trajectories of several NFT metaverse projects during the same period.
The approximately $70 million raised was nominally directed towards game development, but the product has yet to materialize. By the end of 2022, it had to bring in Web3 venture studio LiquidX, ceding 60% ownership in exchange for a new round of funding and management takeover, indicating that the original team could no longer sustain development costs and had to dilute equity for survival funds. Although LiquidX revamped the art resources and restructured the roadmap after taking over, it ultimately failed to deliver the core promise of a "game" as a tangible product.
This complete cycle of "minting for funds—delays—bringing in external capital for takeover—not delivering—eventual liquidation" mirrors the trajectory of NFT projects that relied on narrative and collectible attributes for fundraising but lacked real game development capabilities from 2021 to 2022. Currently, the entire NFT gaming sector is in the final stages of concentrated liquidation after funding exhaustion and the disappearance of speculative demand, with Pixelmon's closure being a newer example in this round of cyclical clearing.
This is essentially a typical clearing intertwined with capital concentration and technological replacement—NFT issuance mechanisms previously allowed project parties to obtain massive early funding at low cost without delivering products, but when overall industry trust collapses and secondary market liquidity dries up, this "raise funds first, develop later" financing model loses its ability to sustain cash flow. Mechanically, once there are no real users paying and no external blood transfusions to maintain cash flow, teams relying solely on primary market minting income will ultimately face the same outcome—halt development and disband the team.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
It's not hard to raise money through minting; delivering a product is the challenge.
Concepts can raise funds but cannot guarantee repeat purchases.
The primary market can sustain for a while, but not for a lifetime.