Animoca's NFT Gaming Bet
Animoca Brands
This move turned Animoca from a normal mobile game studio into a leveraged bet on digital property inside games. Instead of just selling downloads or in app items, it started buying and backing the pieces of an NFT game economy, game worlds like The Sandbox, breakout titles like Axie Infinity, infrastructure, and branded content. That gave it upside if players began treating game items like owned assets that could be traded, held, and reused across a broader crypto ecosystem.
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The clearest product shift was Pixowl in 2018. Animoca bought the maker of The Sandbox, a mobile building game with 40M installs, then rebuilt it around blockchain so players could buy land, mint creations, and trade them as NFTs using SAND. That is a very different business from selling a one time game or closed virtual currency.
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The investment pattern matched the thesis. Animoca backed Dapper Labs early, after CryptoKitties showed that collectible game assets could drive real demand, and led an investment in Sky Mavis in 2019. In practice, this meant owning exposure to the three big early proofs of concept, collectibles, virtual worlds, and play to earn economies.
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This also made Animoca structurally different from Epic, Roblox, or traditional publishers. Those companies mainly monetize inside closed platforms through in app purchases and creator fees. Animoca tried to make money both from game transactions and from appreciation in tokens and equity across its portfolio, which made it more like a game operator plus a crypto holding company.
Going forward, the winners in this market are likely to be the companies that can make digital ownership feel useful, not just speculative. Animoca is positioned where that shift would pay off first, because it assembled games, tokens, marketplaces, and IP early. If open game economies become a durable layer of gaming, its all in bet looks less like a niche wager and more like early ecosystem control.