The development of The Mystery Society, a Web3 sport that combines the casual-friendly play of Among Us with a crime unknown feeling, has been postponed after Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow announced it had had trouble finding funding to continue supporting the sport.
The studio raised$ 3 million in a Shima Capital led funding round when the web-based game first appeared in early 2024. Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow was founded by soldiers of the gaming industry, and it is led by CEO Chris Heatherly, who was formerly in charge of NBC Universal’s entertainment division and Disney’s Club Penguin game systems.
Mystery Society was originally developed on the Polygon scaling system of Ethereum before moving to Immutable late last year with the intention to create a MYSTRY coin for the game. But now the gift is on hang following Monday’s announcement.
The group’s X article read,” We will keep the game live as long as we can while we look for a fresh home.” We are considering a reboot on Steam without the Web3 components. And we are available to shifting the game to a publisher—either in Web2 or Web3—if there are any willing to take it ahead”.
When Heatherly was reached for comment, she quickly referred to dilemmas preventing funding to continue the development of the game.
” It’s the mother of all clusterfucks for Web3 gaming right now—the crypto market’s crashing, VCs are tapped out, and a poor track record of game token]generation events, or TGEs ]”, he told . The majority of the dry powder was deployed weeks before, and some venture capitalists have been forced to engage in wet trading of alts and memes in an effort to gain new funding. The danger appetite is non-existent”.
However, crypto prices have been battered of late. While some major currencies have already lost the majority of those gains, others have already attained new all-time highs following President Trump’s victory in the November election. Bitcoin traded below$ 83, 000 on Thursday, scarcely a quarter after peaking above$ 108, 000.
Game tokens have experienced some of the most difficult blows, trading in the same way as meme coins with their erratic swings. Only two entertainment tokens are still in the top 100 cash by market cap as of this writing, with several of them having dropped off the list in recent months. The majority of the biggest new games currencies released last year have since lost value.
Heatherly pointed the finger at investors and key merchants as they aspired to quick profits in his remarks, all the while the popularity of meme currencies sank.
Meme coins, he said, “have truly fucked the area more than people want to admit.” People were drawn to the magical “ponzinomic” belief that “you really need hype, not a genuine product, and you can simply rotate from sign to sign, narrative to narrative by chasing alpha”
Heatherly argued that this is the motivation behind many crypto game developers ‘ efforts to maintain the enthusiasm, which include initiatives like dedicated layer-2 systems, Telegram subsidiary activities, and AI agents.
” It’s not that some of this isn’t possible for doing”, he clarified,” but it’s being done to judge funding or publicity a token, never in a philosophical or long-term way”.
Heatherly also thinks Web3 game has a prospect. He thinks a model that allows players to market their NFTs or tokens for a certain amount of money when they stop playing online games might help encourage Web3 adoption. However, that only works when objectives are kept in check and people don’t need large key rewards just for playing a sport.
The Mystery Society was created taking into account the functionality of” Web2″ activities like Among Us and Stumble Guys, which Heatherly claimed have each generated hundreds of millions of dollars in lost blockchain currency. He believes the free-to-play business would speedily move on-chain if for a design was proven over, but that requires moving past the “get-rich-quick dream” that remains widespread in the space.
The place must be destroyed before it can prove itself, Heatherly continued. ” We need to remain focused on building good on-chain businesses first, and stop this TGE-to-nowhere ponzinomic mistake. Every Web3 games leader I know is frustrated, burned out, and only doing what they are doing to try to survive—but with genuine faith evaporating by the day”.
However, there might be some hope at the end of the tunnel. Heatherly wrote on Wednesday that he has received inquiries from various chains and creators in the field and is thinking about” tokenizing the IP” for The Mystery Society or take a different direction.
He wrote on X,” I got into this because I missed Club Penguin and I wanted to do Club Penguin for adults.” And somehow, all the people I encountered just wanted to get away, and it just felt soulless and so unrelated to what I want to do and am good at.
” But the last few days, ‘ve let me know that may still be out there”, Heatherly continued. ” may still care. might want to combine more than just a pump and dump into one piece. might want to construct a true clubhouse for Web 3. I believe I see a way if are still out there and want to figure out this out.
GG Newsletter
Get the latest web3 gaming news, hear directly from gaming studios and influencers covering the space, and receive power-ups from our partners.
