Mythical Games acquires DMarket blockchain gaming marketplace

Mythical Games, a blockchain game publisher and developer, said it has acquired DMarket, a marketplace for digital skins and non-fungible tokens for gamers.

And today, Los Angeles-based Mythical is launching its Mythical Marketplace 2.0, based on the technology built by Mythical and DMarket for its own marketplace, John Linden, CEO Mythical Games, said in an interview with GamesBeat. The price of the agreement was not disclosed.

The new marketplace is built on Mythical’s new Layer 1 Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchain and powered by Mythical’s native ecosystem token, MYTH.

The acquisition is a significant milestone for Mythical Games, with DMarket’s technology facilitating the most advanced trading platform for digital assets. That makes Mythical the world’s second-largest processor of digital assets on a distributed ledger after the Ethereum network, as of December, Linden said.

Mythical’s Marketplace 2.0 has fully integrated DMarket’s technology to display it [principles of] mixed payment gateway, with a powerful anti-money laundering (AML) and anti-fraud protection system built on more than ten years of industry experience.

Marketplace 2.0 provides a frictionless user experience that enables peer-to-peer transactions and empowerment for players who want to participate in the play-and-own economies of the future, the companies said. The Mythical chain has been active for six weeks, processing over two million transactions.

“We founded Mythical Games in 2018 with the idea of ​​ushering in both the next generation of games and the next generation of players. Half a decade later, we continue to do just that. Mythicals Marketplace 2.0 was designed to not only enhance our platform, but, more importantly, enhancing the player experience and setting the standard for the future of gaming,” said Linden. “Too often, developers tout features like ‘seamless’ and ‘integrated’ when discussing games or metaverse projects. In reality, these solutions are still very complicated and not made for gamers. But with these monumental steps forward, Mythical will provide users with an experience that delivers both.”

How the deal started

Vlad Panchenko, CEO of DMarket, started the company together with Tamara Slanova in 2017. They created a marketplace for trading games and esports digital assets. DMarket’s partners and clients include Darewise, GSC Game World, the Na’Vi esports team, Unity, Xsolla and others. It has grown into one of the top three digital asset markets in the world. In June 2020, DMarket raised $6.5 million and added gaming pioneer Trip Hawkins to its board.

Panchenko and Linden met last year at the Dice Summit in Las Vegas. They started talking about the challenges for Web3 gaming and they saw how each company complemented the other between Mythical’s strength in gaming and DMarket’s strength in the marketplace.

“We just started talking and the synergies between these two companies are amazing,” Linden said. “They have a decade of operational experience around digital transactions and how they can really work together to deliver liquidity and good market activity. So we actually decided to put the companies together. And we actually did that in August. And then we have worked heads down.”

Marketplace 2.0 will support NFL Rivals and Nitro Nation World Tour assets, with plans to expand to all Mythical titles on the Mythical Chain. Assets on the mythical chain will be completely governed by smart contracts with both ownership and trading logic enforced on a secure distributed digital ledger.

“The new horizons of the gaming space have always been the main focus of DMarket. We are excited to become part of Mythical Games’ work to lower barriers to entry for innovative game developers and thriving new economies,” said Panchenko. “We share a vision of how the industry will evolve and how we can all contribute and bring more fun to the gaming community worldwide.”

DMarket’s office in Kyiv, Ukraine has become part of Mythical East, headquartered in Lisbon, Portugal. Co-founders Panchenko and Slanova will become part of Mythical’s management team, with a particular focus on building the best and simplest marketplace technology for the gaming industry.

DMarket has also adopted Mythical Chain for its existing marketplace, which will continue to operate outside of Mythical Marketplace. DMarket.com will retain the familiar experience of buying in US dollars in the online experience; However, all trades are recorded on Mythical Chain to provide full transparency to the community.

Panchenko said that the war in Ukraine was a great hardship. He saw the risk of war and had the foresight to move the entire team and their families from Ukraine to Montenegro. It helped DMarket save jobs and the company’s product. Now the team is spread out and anchored by an eastern office in Lisbon, Portugal. Some team members stayed in Ukraine by their own decisions, and some serve in the army.

“We have now all moved more permanently to Lisbon,” Linden said. He said team members will be able to work from whatever location they feel most comfortable with.

“We have been very grateful to work with Vlad and his team,” said Linden. – The resilience of the Ukrainian people is simply remarkable. The team has been through a lot this year. We have tried to be as empathetic as possible because they have really had their lives turned upside down. And they’re still just an amazing team. They work so hard and build with us.”

In total, Mythical has more than 300 people, and about 94 of them are part of DMarket.

“We’re going to continue to expand,” Linden said.

Mythical’s focus is very much on building first-party and second-party games. And the company is doing a lot of work to commercialize its platform product, which other developers can use to create blockchain games. This month, the company expects to handle as much as $10 million in transactions through Mythical Chain.

I asked about the fraud lawsuit that Mythical filed against Fenix ​​Games last month against a team of former Mythical executives for allegedly raising money for themselves instead of for Mythical as they were awarded.

“Obviously, I think it was an unfortunate incident for us,” Linden said. “Our board felt that we had to take action to protect shareholder and investor or employee interests. So we’re not really going to comment on it that much. But we’re, you know, we’re focused on moving forward on an expeditious basis.”

The way forward

The company will soon be taking a look at the new marketplace for its NFL Rivals and Nitro Nation World Tour games.

“It’s been a pretty quick integration,” Linden said. “That’s one of the reasons we didn’t announce [acquisition]. We were just so heads down.”

DMarket continues to sell its game skins and other non-NFT digital goods on the DMarket.com site, aiming to create a premium trading platform for gamers.