Gala Games Axes ’Walking Dead’ as Crypto-Gaming Shakeout Continues—Flappy Bird Cashes Out
Another week, another crypto-gaming purge. Gala Games just pulled the plug on its ’Walking Dead’ tie-in—no more zombie NFTs shuffling toward an imaginary ROI. Meanwhile, someone actually thought resurrecting ’Flappy Bird’ as a blockchain play was a good idea. Spoiler: It crashed faster than a leveraged degen’s portfolio.
These moves signal a brutal weeding-out phase. Projects without real utility or gameplay are getting ghosted by both studios and players. Even the ’play-to-earn’ crowd is realizing that ’earn’ part requires someone else to buy in first—a pyramid scheme by any other name still smells like burnt ETH.
Yet buried in the rubble? Actual builders. The ones focusing on fun over tokenomics might just survive the crypto winter. Or at least outlast the next Tether FUD cycle.
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Gala Games announced last week that The Walking Dead: Empires, a multiplayer survival game featuring Ethereum NFTs, will shut down on July 31. The game allowed players to purchase NFT assets like weapons, supplies, and land deeds—some selling for as high as $67,000 during the 2021 NFT boom.
As compensation, Gala will distribute NFTs with "equal functionality" from other games to current holders, though some users have griped on social media about the value of the expected assets. The PC game had been in open beta for about a year.
The classic mobile game Flappy Bird has launched on the Epic Games Store for Android without any crypto features, despite previous plans for a token tied to its Telegram version. This new release maintains the original tap-to-navigate gameplay while adding a quest mode, supported only by ads and in-app purchases.
Last year’s Telegram version of the game faced heavy pushback from gamers, and was ultimately shuttered earlier in April. However, it doesn’t appear that Flappy Bird is done with crypto. Last week, following the Android release, the official Telegram channel hosted a community call and wrote, "The Flappy Bird brand belongs to the community."
Nexpace, backed by Nexon, will release MapleStory N on May 15, bringing blockchain integration to the beloved 2D side-scrolling game. Running on its dedicated Avalanche L1 chain "Henesys," the game allows players to own and trade in-game assets on-chain.
The 22-year-old MapleStory franchise boasts 250 million users worldwide, with this PC release marking the first official game in the MapleStory Universe ecosystem, which recently switched from Polygon to Avalanche.
Playtron announced plans to release Game Dollar, a specialized stablecoin for gaming on the SUI blockchain in Q4 2024. The token will support purchases, subscriptions, and rewards across Playtron’s GameOS ecosystem, including the upcoming SuiPlay0X1 handheld console.
Unlike traditional stablecoins, Game Dollar will be programmable at the use case level, backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries, and designed to incentivize specific user behaviors. Playtron CEO Kirt McMaster told Decrypt that this programmability will enable new economic models for developers and marketplaces.
ICYMI
Goblins, take the wheel.
Goblintown: Really Hard Driving Game is now in Early Access on Steam and Epic Games.
Steam: https://t.co/21cdoo9pO7
Epic Games: https://t.co/omY8kGtUi0 pic.twitter.com/MgGO60M7Zl
— goblintown (@goblintown) April 30, 2025
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Pixels is building a decentralized publishing model powered by staking, where games themselves… pic.twitter.com/6ojdNGri7d
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