Ubisoft, Take-Two Back Ethereum NFT Game Maker Horizon in $40M Round

Major video game publishers Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive are digging deeper into the NFT game space with today’s announcement of a Series A round of $40 million brought up by Horizon, the developer behind the NFT-powered competitive card game, Skyweaver.

The two firms are among those who participated in the funding round, which was led by Brevan Howard Digital and Morgan Creek Digital. Other supporters include Polygongaming-centric VC firm Bitkraft, metaverse investor All richpayment company Xsolla and Initialized Capital.

Horizon also attracted some notable individual investors with the round, including Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke, Lolli co-founder and CEO Alex Adelmanand a couple of co-creators from notable NFT games: The sandbox co-founder and COO Sebastien Borget and Axie Infinity co-founder and Sky Mavis COO Aleksander Larsen.

Skyweaver is a digital collectible card game similar to Blizzard’s popular Hearthstonealbeit with the cards represented as Ethereum NFT assets that can be sold and traded – similar to rival NFT games Estates Unchained. An NFT is a blockchain tokenwhich represents ownership of a unique item, including digital goods such as artwork, collectibles, and video game items.

Horizon’s title first launched in closed alpha testing in 2018, but was first released in open beta earlier this year for everyone to play. In addition to publishing the game, Horizon made the technology behind it Sequencean Ethereum-based development platform and wallet for other creators to tap to create their own Web3 games and apps.

In a post today, Horizon wrote that it will use $40 million to further push Sequence, as well as continue to improve and grow Skyweaver. It will also be launched soon Nifty swapa decentralized marketplace focused on Ethereum and Polygon ERC-1155 NFTs – also called semi-fungible tokens (SFTs) – used for games and collectibles.

Horizon has previously raised $13.3 million in seed funding, incl a tranche of 5 million dollars in 2020 led by Initialized and its now deceased co-founder, Alexis Ohanian. The Reddit co-founder has been an outspoken advocate for Skyweaver and NFT gaming in general, tweeting today that it was a “non-obvious investment” at the time.

Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive are two of the biggest video game publishers out there. Ubisoft is the company behind massive franchises such as Assassin’s Creed, Just Dance and Far Cry, while Take-Two’s popular brands such as Rockstar Games and 2K Games have produced smashes such as Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption and NBA 2K.

Both have also made previous moves into the Web3 area. Ubisoft has experimented with NFTs and blockchain technology for yearsand recently stepped up efforts at launching Tezos-based NFTs into the game for the PC game Ghost Recon Breakpoint in December 2021. The firm has also invested in and backed a number of other Web3 startups.

Take-Two, meanwhile, recently acquired mobile and casual game maker Zynga, which is currently working on NFT-powered games. In January, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick specifically cited “Web3 capabilities” on the horizon, which he said the combined company would be better positioned to address.

Many players have pushed back against NFTs citing fraud, rampant speculation and now reduced environmental impact of the top platform Ethereum. However, many are in the Web3 area – from developers to marketplace builders-believes that NFTs will eventually take hold in the video game industry due to potential benefits for both players and creators.