Solana Shooter Game ‘Nyan Heroes’ Shuts Down Amid Funding Issues

Solana cat-themed hero shooter game Nyan Heroes is shutting down, 9 Lives Interactive announced Friday, with the developer citing an inability to secure the necessary funding to finish the game. 

The free-to-play hero shooter recently completed its fourth play test via the Epic Games Store, which included its largest play-to-earn airdrop of the NYAN token on Solana. A full game launch was planned for next winter.

The Overwatch-style PC game launched its first pre-alpha test in March 2024 and ultimately generated more than one million players across its four play tests, with more than 250,000 players wishlisting the title across the Epic Games Store and Steam.

“Despite these accomplishments and discussions around publishing, new investments, grants and acquisition—we weren’t able to secure the required capital to see the game to completion,” Nyan Heroes posted on X (formerly Twitter). “This is not the outcome we were hoping for. The industry is in a tough spot right now, and Nyan Heroes will unfortunately be closing its doors.”

In an email to Decrypt, 9 Lives CEO and Creative Director Max Fu shared some hope for a future for Nyan Heroes, but any short-term outcome is unlikely.

“It’s been a difficult last few months,” he told Decrypt. “Currently, we are exploring acquisition of the studio and/or the IP. Some discussions are underway, but I suspect it may take some time to finalize a decision.”

Nyan Heroes’ blockchain components—which were not required for play—included the NYAN token on Solana blockchain, as well as Cat NFTs that were minted in 2021 before the game was even available to play. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, news of the game closing its doors did not bode well for the NYAN token, now down nearly 40% on the day and trading below a $1 million market cap. Trading at $0.006, it’s now 98.5% off its all-time high of $0.45 from May 2024. 

The project’s closure continues a trend of Web3 games struggling to find their footing.

In February, Ethereum game Mystery Society suspended development, also pointing to the struggle to raise funds to continue. Earlier this month, Gala Games announced it will end support for The Walking Dead: Empires in July.

“Another game down,” pseudonymous Treeverse game founder and investor Loopify posted on X. “I invested in Nyan Heroes and they boast extremely good stats, with the consideration it was incentivized, so [it] didn’t matter much. Because at the end of the day, all that matters is net revenue, only achieved through product market fit.” 

Gaming tokens are struggling to hold their value, as well. In early April, gaming tokens had fallen completely outside of CoinGecko’s top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap. Immutable’s IMX is the only gaming-centric token that is currently back in the top 100, as of this writing.

Edited by Andrew Hayward