Troubled gaming project Abyss World tenders rage-quit option to investors

The “Abyss World” web3 game may be sliding toward just that... the abyss.

The blockchain gaming project on the Sui network has attracted 120,000 pre-orders from users on the Steam wishlist. But on Monday the team behind the venture said that investors are free to exit the enterprise amid funding issues.

The game developers blamed the inability of Chain Hill Capital, a Hong Kong-based blockchain investment company, to make good on its investment pledge made earlier this year.

“Our primary investor, Chain Hill Capital, has unfortunately faced financial turmoil, causing significant delays in their pledged investments, including for ‘Abyss World,’” the team said on its Discord server earlier this week.

Promised funding

Chain Hill Capital took part in a strategic funding round in May for Metagame Industries, developers of the “Abyss World” title. The deal bestowed Metagame with a valuation of about $100 million.

Chain Hill committed its investment from a $60 million blockchain gaming fund, which the firm launched in April.

Neither the dev team from “Abyss World” or Chain Hill representatives responded to DL News’ requests for comments.

The funding situation is also bad news for Sui, a layer 1 blockchains with a market capitalisation of $355 million. “Abyss World” was supposed to be one of its top web3 games.

Significant drain

In their Discord server, “Abyss World” developers say Chain Hill’s failure to release the funding has placed a significant drain on the project’s cash reserves.

The team said it has pursued expansion efforts on the promise of capital from Chain Hill that has not materialised. With limited funds, Abyss World is scaling back some of its ambitious bonus packages for community members.

The funding issues have forced the team to postpone a planned SUI token airdrop for Gazer holders. Gazer is a Genesis NFT collection for early “Abyss World” community members.

The gaming team is taking drastic measures to keep going, including releasing locked investor tokens to their respective owners in case they wish to liquidate their holdings.

This effectively constitutes a rage quit offer, as noted by some community members with one stating “I have no money, I won’t play anymore,” on the project’s Discord.

“Abyss World” investors hold the project’s AWT token, which has lost half its value in the last 24 hours and is now down 95% from its June peak.

This is a far cry from the optimism that was bubbling this summer. Investors who participated in an initial DEX offering in June paid $0.003 per AWT; they are now trading at $0.0008, a 73% paper loss.

“The team is doing absolutely nothing to increase the price [and] it just keeps dumping and dumping since IDO,” one community member with the Discord screen name Larryjay said.

“This is not appealing at all,” Larryjay said. “We IDO participants are counting our losses big time. … So so sad.”

Another community member called Lyon(AW) said the rage-quit offer was the “simplest and crudest” choice by the team.

“Regardless of whether the VC investment has been received, the NFT and IDO money you sell are all real money, right?” Lyon(AW) said.

The “Abyss World” team said it would continue to develop the game despite the current issues and plans to burn repurchased tokens of team members as a way to boost the price of the asset.

The team on Tuesday also announced a snapshot that will used to distributed BvB tokens to Gazer holders as well as more promotional videos showcasing the progress of the game’s development thus far.

“Abyss World” is reportedly not the only blockchain gaming team suffering from Chain Hill’s apparent financial turmoil. Chain Hill’s problems have reportedly held up about $20 million in funding for several blockchain game developers.

Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. To share tips or information about stories, please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.