Sky Mavis soft launches Axie Infinity: Origin as a free-to-play title
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Sky Mavis, the creator of the popular blockchain game Axie Infinity, announced the global early access release of its free-to-play game Axie Infinity: Origin.
The launch of the more accessible web-based brand new game in the Axie franchise comes a week after Sky Mavis’ Ronin Network was hacked in a heist where thieves stole $624 million from Axie Infinity players and Sky Mavis. That means there is a lot at stake in the launch of the new game in restoring confidence in Sky Mavis.
That amounts to a lot of pressure for the game to succeed, but Sky Mavis also announced today that it had raised $150 million in funding from Binance and other investors. That should help assuage concerns that anyone has about the company being able to meet immediate working capital needs, the company believes.
The new standalone free-to-play Origin web game is available for downloading on Mavis Hub, Sky Mavis’ distribution platform. Originally, the free-to-play alpha test was supposed to launch last week, but the company pushed the launch back to today after the hack, said Jeff Zirlin, a cofounder of Sky Mavis and growth lead. It isn’t available on Android or iOS yet, but a web-based mobile version is coming.
“We wanted to keep pushing, and we wanted to make progress and, and show the community our hard work,” Zirlin said. “So that’s why we’re going forward with the early access launch this week. And we’re really excited about it. I think the community is super excited as well.”
The current Axie Infinity game has more 1.5 million daily active users, but that game is less accessible to people on a budget because it requires players to
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