Quick Take
- Nyan Heroes, Ember Sword, and Walking Dead: Empires are shutting down in 2025
- Many had live tokens, early access builds, and branded partnerships
- Funding gaps and lack of active players have led to widespread closures
The list of crypto games going offline in 2025 keeps getting longer. Some raised millions, others partnered with major IP or influencers, and a few had active player bases testing out early builds. Despite those advantages, more than a dozen projects have shuttered this year alone and the ones left behind are asking the same question: what went wrong.
Some teams cited funding issues, others blamed shifting market conditions, but for most of the players involved the result was the same — the game they backed is no longer playable and the assets they once believed in are now frozen or worthless.
Here are some of the most notable shutdowns so far.
Nyan Heroes Walked Away, Players Didn’t
Nyan Heroes launched with the right mix of visibility and polish. It was a cat-mech hero shooter built on Solana, ran several public playtests, reached the Epic Games Store, and gathered more than 250,000 wishlist signups. In late 2024 the team brought on a professional esports org in a move that was publicly framed as a signal that Web3 could break into competitive gaming. That partnership reportedly came with a six-figure sponsorship deal and was promoted across tournaments and livestreams.
When the game shut down in May, the esports squad had already left and the players still grinding early builds were the ones left holding assets with nowhere to use them. The NYAN token collapsed, dropping more than 95% from its high, and while the studio said it’s exploring a sale of the IP, there’s been no follow-up since. Community channels were filled with players expressing frustration that they had invested time, money, and effort into a game that was no longer shipping anything.
The shutdown hit hard not just because of the loss but because the project had all the visible signs of momentum.
Ember Sword Promised More Than It Delivered
Ember Sword was one of the most hyped Web3 MMOs to date, being one of the OG titles that appeared in 2021. It raised early venture backing, ran a land NFT sale that claimed over $200 million in pledges, and built up a public narrative around metaverse ownership and persistent worlds. The project switched chains multiple times and eventually settled on Immutable, where it entered closed beta in 2024.
Feedback from that test period was mixed, with most players saying the build lacked depth and polish. By May 2025, the studio confirmed that Ember Sword was shutting down, citing an inability to secure the funding needed to continue development. Bright Star Studios issued a final note saying they had “explored every possible option,” but ultimately couldn’t survive the market environment.
The game’s failure became symbolic for critics of early crypto gaming cycles. High funding, major promises, but no working product at the end.
Walking Dead: Empires Will Shut Down in July
Gala Games built The Walking Dead: Empires as a licensed zombie MMO with NFT land sales, base-building mechanics, and a PvE loop built around AMC’s long-running franchise. It had early buy-in from collectors and ran in open beta with live players and blockchain integrations tied to Ethereum and GALA.
In April 2025 Gala confirmed the game will go offline on July 31. It offered “mystery boxes” as a form of compensation to NFT holders, although the value of those boxes and what games they might link to has not been made clear. The game had remained playable until the announcement, but interest had sharply declined in the months leading up to its sunset notice.
The title had once been positioned as a flagship in Gala’s ecosystem and its closure raised new questions around the viability of licensed IP in Web3 gaming.
One After Another
Each project had its own path to shutdown but the signals are starting to converge. Development in this space remains expensive and slow. Studios are still relying heavily on upfront NFT sales or token launches before gameplay is stable. Player retention is low and updates take time. And in most cases, investors and teams exit before the players do.
Nyan Heroes had traction. Ember Sword had funding. Walking Dead had a brand. None of them are making it to the finish line.
Across the Web3 space more games are now testing different models. Some without tokens, some without NFTs, some without presales at all. Smaller teams are still shipping updates and a few projects are shifting toward more traditional monetization models that don’t rely on early speculation.
But the wave of shutdowns in 2025 makes one thing clear: building a sustainable Web3 game is still the hardest part of the entire pitch.
Sad to see this. It has to happen this is why I am careful about what I get into now.