This Week in Crypto Games: Saga Airdrop, Notcoin Trading, and PlayStation NFT Plans

The crypto and NFT gaming space is busier than ever lately, what with prominent games starting to release, token airdrops piling up, and a seemingly constant array of other things happening at all times. It’s a lot to take in!

Luckily, Decrypt’s GG is all over it. And if you need a quick way to get caught up on the latest moves around crypto video games, we’re debuting This Week in Crypto Games.

Our weekend roundup serves up the biggest news from the past week, along with a few other tidbits you might have missed. We also showcase a few of our original stories from the week.

Biggest news

Saga airdrop begins: Saga, a layer-1 blockchain with a huge focus on gaming, launched its SAGA token last week and began the airdrop claim for over 200,000 unique wallets. Some of those wallets come from its play-to-airdrop campaign across games on Saga, Solana, Avalanche, and beyond, while others get tokens for DeFi staking across Cosmos, Celestia, and elsewhere. Click here for more details.

Notcoin trading: Viral Telegram game Notcoin is quickly becoming the buzziest thing in crypto gaming ahead of its upcoming token mint on The Open Network (TON), and the hype only grew last week as the project launched pre-market trading. Users with Notcoin balances of at least 10 million can convert them into NFT vouchers and then trade them to speculate on the future value of the on-chain NOT token.

PlayStation NFTs: Will PlayStation embrace NFTs for user-owned assets? Sony is considering it, at least, according to details from a patent application that was recently published. It points to a “super-fungible token” format that bundles up NFTs for in-game assets and makes it possible for users to port them across games—and potentially trade them too. We’ll see whether Sony actually does anything with the concept… but this isn’t its first gaming NFT patent push.

Prices surge: As Decrypt’s GG reported earlier Sunday, gaming tokens are skyrocketing in value this weekend, with Pixels (PIXEL), Beam (BEAM), and Parallel (PRIME) hitting new all-time high prices while Gala (GALA) and Immutable (IMX) set multi-year peaks. Click here for the full rundown of the biggest gaming gainers right now.

ICYMI

• Gaming giant Ubisoft is bringing its Watch Dogs gaming franchise to card-battler Cross the Ages via NFT cards that will be sold in April.
• Ubisoft double-dipped on crypto announcements last week, also announcing that it will join the XPLA gaming network as a validator.
• Coinbase and Base—the Ethereum scaling network that it incubated—are giving out free in-game cards and currency for NFT game Parallel.
• Avalanche first-person shooter Shrapnel announced last week that it has revised its token unlock schedule, and about 75% less SHRAP will unlock in April.

We’re excited to announce the Portal @DOTA2 World Invitational. A global Esports tournament with world-class pro teams, streamed to millions of fans.

We’re also launching exclusive DOTA2 collectables via Portal – open your lootboxes to get in-game items & skins.

March 2024 👀 pic.twitter.com/kcJ1iuYqy1

— Portal (@Portalcoin) March 7, 2024

• One week after dropping its token, Portal announced that it will host an esports tournament for popular PC game Dota 2 this month, complete with collectibles and loot boxes. No other details have been revealed yet.
• BloodLoop, an Avalanche-based hero shooter akin to Overwatch, launched its play-to-airdrop campaign last week and says it now has 100,000 players signed up.
• Apeiron, a hybrid god game and roguelite on Ronin, will launch a sale for its APRS token beginning March 12. The game’s play-to-airdrop campaign is currently underway.

GG spotlight

Here are a few of our original stories from this past week that we think are well worth a weekend read:

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