How does Animoca Brands, a down-and-out game company, rely on NFT to counterattack?

The wave of NFT and the metaverse has led to the emergence of a large number of new business entities, including the well-known chain game Axie Infinity, and the NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Among the new projects, a slightly old company stands out. Animoca Brands was established in 2014 and initially focused on mobile game development and distribution. It was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, but was subsequently delisted. When the dividend period of mobile games declined, the company was unable to make ends meet for a long time, and even had to expand its e-book business for a while.

It is such a company that has rewritten its fate with the help of NFT and has become the hottest giant in the NFT field. Its blockchain games include "The Sandbox", "Crazy Kings" and so on. Previously, it was an early investor in NFT star projects such as Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis, Decentraland, Dapper Labs (NBA Top Shot).

In the past year, Animoca Brands has successively completed several huge financings ranging from tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars, and its valuation has also grown from $1 billion to $5 billion.

This legendary counter-attack story is not accidental. The uniqueness of Animoca Brands is that it paid special attention to IP-licensed games at the beginning of the development of mobile games, and developed licensed mobile games such as "Garfield", "Doraemon" and "Ultraman". During the transition to NFT, it continued to obtain IP copyrights in sports such as Formula 1, the American Professional Baseball League, and the Bundesliga through cooperation, acquisitions, etc., and developed chain games such as F1 racing F1 Delta Time. Not long ago, its subsidiary also cooperated with the International Olympic Committee to release the Beijing Winter Olympics-themed chain tour, and released Olympic series NFTs such as Bing Dun Dun.

It can be said that the dedication to popular IP and the accumulation of IP resources have enabled Animoca Brands to quickly seize the opportunity in the NFT wave and complete the counter-attack transformation. And it is also giving back in the form of investment and creation, promoting the advancement of NFT and the metaverse.

Animoca Brands is expected to receive huge investment in a row

If there were a list of unicorns emerging from the wave of NFTs and the metaverse, Animoca Brands would be on the list. The Hong Kong-based company started out as a lesser-known traditional mobile game developer. It was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange through a backdoor, but was eventually delisted due to issues such as internal governance and trading violations.

Mobile games entered the dividend period and declined. Animoca Brands had experienced a difficult time, and the emergence of NFT and the metaverse rewrote its fate.

The relationship between Animoca Brands and NFT began in 2018. Back then, when the first-generation blockchain game called Cryptokitties became very popular, Animoca Brands, which was in transition, saw the potential of this market. It authorized the development team of Cryptokitties and was allowed to exclusively distribute Cryptokitties in China and get a share.

Although this cooperation is not very profitable, Animoca Brands sees a broad space for NFTs. Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, said at the time the company had a strategy that digital property rights would revolutionize the industry in the future by expanding financial inclusion, and this important change would begin in NFTs are used in the game.

Since then, Animoca Brands has entered the NFT field in all aspects. In August 2018, Animoca Brands acquired the sandbox mobile game "the Sandbox" developed by Pixowl and built it on the blockchain. Through this virtual sandbox world, Animoca Brands entered its NFT world.

Two years later, NFT has become one of the hottest topics in the blockchain circle, and a large number of NFTs have completed transactions at sky-high prices. Subsequently, chain games with NFT as the key underlying element became popular, and "the Sandbox", which had an early layout and accumulated a large number of users, broke out smoothly and became one of the most popular chain games.