Play-to-Earn Declines as Blockchain Gaming Shifts to Ecosystem Integrations

Blockchain gaming is reaching a new stage of maturity, with increasing numbers of players accessing games more seamlessly, according to an organization focused on advancing the technology in the gaming sector.

However, there are changes in the sector that could create dramatic shifts as traditional gaming developers come into play.

The changing tides coincide with major studios like Sony and Square Enix entering the space through layer-2 solutions, according to an industry survey released by the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) this week. 

Yet public perception remains a key obstacle.

The report shows that 66% of projects are still trying to establish credibility, fighting against the misconception that blockchain games are linked to scams.

Despite this, the ease with which gamers can get into blockchain games has improved, with onboarding friction rates dropping from 79.5% last year to 53.9% in 2024. 

That’s mainly due to better user experiences that make introducing gamers to blockchain games less hassle.

“At the heart of this growth is the principle of player empowerment,” BGA President Sebastian Borget wrote in the report.

Borget speaks to the narrative of ownership that has been the main point of attraction for gamers looking into blockchain-based experiences. The report shows that over 71% of its respondents consider this the “single biggest benefit that blockchain gaming delivers.”

“Since the last market cycle, more efforts have been put into UX and UI, prioritizing a seamless experience similar to what players would expect from Web2 games,” a pass of the report reads.

The alliance noted the trend will expand in 2025, with a new emphasis on player experience over financial mechanisms.

Blockchain gaming platforms are shifting away from overt crypto elements—like token economies and NFT marketplaces—toward seamless integrations where the Web3 functionality operates in the background.

Play-to-earn shifts to a new meta

Blockchain gaming faces a new meta as 2025 arrives, and the Blockchain Game Alliance shared its predictions with Decrypt.

The transition from traditional centralized gaming servers to blockchain-based infrastructure shows how games have embraced the ownership narrative, BGA said.

While conventional games rely on regional server networks for stability and data management, blockchain integration enables true digital ownership through on-chain asset tracking and trading.

In that regard, the play-to-earn models that emerged sometime in 2020 have also drastically shifted to focus more on how on-chain characteristics could be utilized for games.

Such a shift has spawned iterations that are merit-based and activity-driven, notes Andrew Campbell, better known in Web3 communities as Zyori.

“The original play-to-earn model suffered from two critical flaws: hyper-inflationary rewards that grew uncontrollably with user adoption and a lack of sufficient token sinks to create deflationary pressure,” Campbell wrote in the report.

Fully on-chain games and autonomous worlds

The report also presented two new terms: autonomous worlds (AW) and fully on-chain games (FOCGs). They describe games as being closely native to and living entirely on-chain as autonomous experiences.

This includes game rules, player items, and in-game economics, rather than just keeping some pieces on-chain while running the game’s main client on regular, centralized servers.

Autonomous worlds enable games to “improve based on community input” by placing “elements of game state and logic on-chain,” Gillian Pua, chief of staff at Sovrun (formerly BreederDAO), told Decrypt.

This aspect also plays into how fully on-chain games could run in the near future, with the advancements in AI merging with blockchain infrastructure.

“With on-chain transparency, AWs also provide the perfect foundation for AI Agents to thrive, enabling intelligent, adaptive gameplay that responds to real-time player behavior,” Pua said.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair