Immutable's pivot raises questions...
SIDELINED NEWS 166
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TLDR :
Axie ships Terrariums V1
Immutable pivots to AI marketing tech
Cambria ships new update: Pendants
🗞️ NEWS
AXIE SHIPS TERRARIUMS V1
Last week, Axie Infinity shipped Terrariums V1: “Bring your Axies home.” An Axie-based farming simulator and hub that reignites the utility around Axie Land NFTs (based on the vision set back in 2019)
With this update, they sunset Axie Homeland. During Lunacian Lounge EP3 (Feb 2026), Jihoz said: “Homeland ended up being not what we wanted it to be... we’re going to rip off the band-aid and replace it with the new Terrarium system”
Terrariums are a lightweight and passive experience: “Think of it as gamified staking that respects your time” (Axie Substack). The core game loop is as follows:
Activate Plots → Assign Axies
Consume Lunium per Tick (in-game premium currency)
Every Tick (hour), Land burns Lunium, depending on the type of land and any changes made
Lunium is primarily acquired through IAPs. Land itself also generates some Lunium, but it’s minimal
Earn hourly bAXS rewards
Based on Atia’s Flame: Axie Power. Rare Axies carry more Flame than common ones. To earn bAXS from a Flame, Axies must be in Atia’s Shrine (i.e., staked)
Jihoz on Terrariums (during Sidelined), last April: “There’s also this idea that we want to use Terrariums to introduce a massive Axie burning mechanic”
Note: There’s no burning mechanic for now, but it’d be interesting to see it added in the future
Each type of land has a different, capped bAXS pool attached to it. This makes the emissions competitive
Despite the simplicity of the game, there’s depth to the decision-making that influences earnings. Players can optimize for how many and which Axies they use, what the bAXS/day and bAXS/tick are, how competitive the pools are, and how to spend their Lunium
Player Marten.ron, who’s been reporting his Terrarium progress, says that: “The real alpha is still bAXS per Atia’s Flame”
In essence, Terrariums is a vehicle that generates revenue from IAPs and gives players spending power (bAXS) in return. This leads to the majority of value being retained in the Axie ecosystem:
Jihoz on bAXS (during Sidelined), last April: “We've been able to get rid of 95% of all the sybils from the system and around a 50% in sell pressure from game rewards so far (with the use of bAXS)”
Furthermore, the new utility brought to Axies + Land translated to increased floor prices:
According to the Axie account (on June 19), there were 117K Axie sales and 343 ETH volume (+40%) in the last 30 days. Plus, the floor price of normal Axies increased by 92%, and + Mystics went up by 43.6% since Terrarium details were shared
AXS also saw some upward price movement during the weekend
What’s next for Terrariums? Let’s start by looking at the vision of the feature:
“You sort of manage a whole roster of Axies, because one of the core principles of Axie Infinity is the collectible aspect: You collect Axies, you expand your collection horizontally, and Terrariums fit that principle”
Terrariums are a metagame for the Axie collector in this sense
Furthermore, Jeffery Kam added, “One of the product goals with Terrariums also is consolidating a lot of the ecosystem in it. It’s sort of the game layer on top of Axie Core […] That migh mean sunsetting and deprecating some features, and rebuilding them in a holistic way inside of Terrariums”
The goal is to make Terrariums the “onboarding flow” for new players, i.e., the top-of-funnel experience that funnels them into deeper Axie experiences. Similar to what we’re seeing with Cambria and Dungeons
For more specifics on V1.1 and V1.2, you can check out this post
Overall, it’s “interesting” to finally see Axie deliver on its original vision of Land NFTs, set ~7 years ago. While they could have let the initial promise of the NFTs die (like countless others did), Axie is using Terrariums as a way to revitalize its audience of collectors and reshape how players interact with the ecosystem
Lastly, I am also curious about how Terrariums will connect to Atia’s Legacy
IMMUTABLE PIVOTS TO AI MARKETING TECH
A surprise move from Immutable this week, as it announced its pivot from crypto gaming to AI marketing tech for game publishers (through Immutable Audience)
With this pivot, Immutable cut almost its entire game development team, working on Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians. Further work on these titles will be outsourced, with a very small internal team focused on games
From Hulog (CSO): Gods Unchained “will continue to run as our core revenue-generating Studio product,” and Guild of Guardians will “transition to Evergreen/ Maintenance Mode.”
The pivot itself stemmed from its shift last year, in which the company opened up the platform from only crypto games to traditional games as well, specifically on the growth side. A “radical reshaping and refocusing” was required to bring their product, Immutable Audience (IA), to the whole gaming market
Frankly, it’s also unclear to me how successful Immutable was over the past few years (looking at its financials later). With over 700+ games on the platform, its successes seem to be a handful of titles, including Guild of Guardians and Gods Unchained
To date, its biggest feat remains the amount of money it raised
So, IA is marketing tech for publishers. What does it do? According to its website, it is “the AI-native growth platform game studios use to capture player data, score audiences, automate campaigns, improve conversion, and drive revenue”
The solution aids in:
Improving the conversion funnel for pre-launch games
Building automated email flows that aid in conversion
Providing detailed player attribution
Facilitating creator partnerships
Building an owned audience that can be reused
It’s essentially a shot at making another AppLovin, and it’s unlikely Immutable will succeed at doing so:
atifkhan31: “There’s 250 ad networks around the world maybe more. For every applovin there’s 50 unity ad networks.”
To use a comparable in crypto, Pixel’s adtech platform, Stacked, focuses on rewarded play
According to Ferguson (one of the co-founders), the company still has 10 years of runway left. The result of raising a monstrous Series C in 2022, of $200M, and great treasury management
Immutable’s Treasury as of today is worth ~$175M (per Token Terminal). And even $800M+ pre 10/10. The value of it tends to be quite cyclical
On the topic of the company’s financials, it reported a loss of $50M in 2023 and $48M in 2024. I’m uncertain whether the company even had a profitable year (operationally)
“Ferguson said the company will not break even by the end of the year (2026), and that he expects to burn “hundreds of thousands” per month in the pursuit of growing the Audience product” (Forbes)
So, the “10 years of runway” might be overly optimistic, considering it has been burning through its reserves so quickly. On the other hand, Immutable has laid off staff in 2025 and now scrapped its internal game dev team, cutting costs
Interestingly, Immutable isn’t the only crypto gaming company that pivoted into a more AI-focused direction in more recent times: Treasure killed its gaming division last year to focus on AI (partly), B3 ditched gaming and is now building an agent economy, and Saga is now Saga AI Labs, to name a few examples
It’s clear the pie wasn’t/isn’t big enough to sustain these companies
While a pivot was needed for Immutable (see financials), building “another App Lovin” is probably not feasible either. But at least they’re trying to make it work?
CAMBRIA BRINGS MAJOR UPDATE: PENDANTS
Cambria brought its first major update to the Dungeons + Gold Rush (its roguelite dungeon crawler) economy and metagame, through Pendants: “a new layer of rare, tradeable chase items that travel with you across runs and, eventually, across the wider Cambria ecosystem”
Pendants are “equippable and tradable trinkets” that carry traits, bonuses, debuffs, and more, affecting how a character plays. They can be traded and will carry utility in future Gold Rush seasons
Pendants in short:
Use: During every Dungeon run, players can equip 2 Trinkets, serving as “build modifiers”
Faucet: Standard Pendants are distributed through the Dungeon Boss Chests
Sink: The “fragility” attribute wears down the Pendants per run (Standard = 100)
However, they can be insured for a fee in Keys/Silver
Genesis Pendants will be sold at an in-game auction today (5 PM CET):
Come with ecosystem-wide utility (bonuses, airdrop, increases, etc.)
5,000 pieces for sale, based on bonding curve pricing ($35 → cap $60)
Rarity, traits, and character affinity revealed after a week
Offchain items that can be traded on the marketplace or P2P
35% of the funds from the sale will be used for a boosted Jackpot pool (up to $70K if fully sold out)
Another new feature that’s coming is “Charm Cards”, a collectible card and character favor layer that’s being added to Cambria:
Based on NFT holdings (Pendants or T2+ Cores), holders gain Weekly Card Packs. Upon burning the Cards, players deepen their favor with one of the characters, which unlocks voice lines, emotes, aura projects, and reacts
Other than this update, Cambria Dungeons added a jackpot mechanic recently, called “Uncut Gems”. When a player reaches the final boss chest, they’re able to find this new treasure, paying out a randomized amount of loot (in $ or keys)
Looking at the data, through this Dune Dashboard, we can see how this update (on June 19) made deposit volume vastly increase:
Deposit volumes on 18th, 19th, and 20th: $28K, $48K, and $58K
Peak volume (day): $78K
Total deposit volume: $900K
In comparison, Maze of Gains’ daily ETH revenue (from key sales) has been rapidly shrinking. Suggesting that Cambria might be taking away mindshare from other risk2earn games (of course, there are other factors at play)
Overall, it’s great to see Cambria scale to a “~$2mm annualized ARR,” but that doesn’t mean that challenges remain to sustain and even bring Dungeons to the next level:
Retention: one of the biggest challenges with risk2earn games is churn after a player loses
Scale: there’s no clear path yet to scale financialized games beyond crypto (Dungeons has ~5K players)
FLASH NEWS
Sophon decomissions its L2 and is going all in on apps on Base
Panini Prizm FIFA World Cup 2026 (football cards) released on Panini
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