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Singapore-based Web3 entertainment company Digital Entertainment Asset (DEA), operator of the PlayMining NFT gaming platform, has raised a US$10 million investment from LA-based LDA Capital, a global alternative investment group, the company said in an announcement on Wednesday.
The raise comes less than a month after DEA receiving a minority investment from Rakuten Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of Japanese e-commerce and internet services giant, Rakuten Group. The company earlier this month also signed a strategic partnership with YGG SEA to expand the GameFi market in Southeast Asia.
Related: Not Game Over Yet as Japan Giants Make Web3 Push Despite Backlash
DEA said it would use the funds to “further accelerate [its] business and market expansion as well as help optimize the development of its Web3 entertainment platform.”
Launched in 2018, DEA manages intellectual property (IP) monetization for content creators and operates the PlayMining platform, which has 2.6 million users and comprises a growing selection of P&E (play and earn) games, an NFT marketplace, and an in-development PlayMining Verse metaverse and the DEAPcoin ($DEP) token.
Its games include Job Tribes, Cookin’ Burger, Menya Dragon Ramen, Graffiti Racer and Lucky Farmer — with the last three having launched in just the last couple of months.
Reversal in fortunes for GameFi?
Facing a rapidly diminishing user base, the play-to-earn gaming space has been relatively quiet in recent months, with chills from crypto winter and fall-outs from the demise of major crypto exchanges being felt across the crypto industry.
The number of users interacting with industry leader Axie Infinity fell 95% from a peak of 744,190 on 26 November 2021 to to 35,420 on 20 August 2022, while DeFi Kingdoms users fell 85% from its peak of 36,670 in December 2021 to 5,290 of August 2022, CoinTelegraph reported, citing DappRadar data.
However, this month has seen a reversal in fortunes for metaverse and NFT-focused cryptocurrencies, such as Axie Infinity (AXS),Flow (FLOW), Apecoin (APE), and Sandbox (SAND), amid a flat crypto market, largely due to rising sales volume in NFTs.
Axie’s AXS token currently stands at around US$7.65, after climbing as high as US$9.5 in 6 December, following the launch of Axie Core the day before – still a far cry from it’s high of US$170, where it sat in summer 2021.
