As the cryptocurrency and NFTs’ economy is becoming more popular, Brazilian game company Prota Games has secured a Seed round to debut as a game developer and launch an NFT and cryptocurrency-based computer game called Heroes of Metaverse and scheduled to be officially launched in October. The BRL 14 million funding round included funds such as Iporanga Ventures, Big Bets, and Class 5 Global, as well as individuals, such as Fersen Lambranho, GP Investments’ chairman, Israel Salmen, founder and CEO at Meliuz, and Christian de Cico, founder of Arquivei.
Although it is now exploring the game development market, Prota Games was founded in 2019 to make informative videos for game players. In less than two years, the content startup has reached the 65 million video views per month mark and built a community of 10 million unique users on Youtube and TikTok. It was thanks to this expertise in community building that Prota Games decided to move forward and develop its own cryptogame.
Heroes of Metaverse is a free 3D game based on character progression, inspired by popular games like Diablo and Hades. By defeating monsters and finishing missions, the character will be able to get some assets like items and coins. These assets are tokenized, meaning that they can be bought and sold on a marketplace using the stable coin BUSD, a cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar.
According to the startup, the user becomes the real owner of the game assets and can monetize them. The items’ pre-sale, held earlier this year, reached BRL 4.5 million in just 24 hours.
Santiago Blanco, Prota Games founder and CEO, said the startup has been watching the rapid growth of the billion-dollar crypto-based gaming market. “The tokenization of items and currencies is one of the biggest revolutions that has ever happened in the gaming industry, but many low-quality games popped up whose main intent was short-term asset valuation, creating unsustainable systems,” he explained.
That is why, according to Blanco, the game needs to have high added value, focused on fun, and not on what he calls irrational asset valuation. “This has been our only focus, to create a high-quality experience, similar to the traditional game industry, but with Web 3.0 innovations that make the product even better for the consumer,” he said.
“They have built a huge audience with a small team and are using this expertise to create a game that is, above all, fun for the users. The coolest thing about this new generation of games is that the asset tokenization also creates financial rewards for users to have fun,” said Renato Valente, partner at Iporanga Ventures.
