When will gaming tokens surge? SaruTobi iOS Bitcoin game review: Web3 Gamer

The crypto market is printing green candles across the board, with 80% of altcoins outperforming Bitcoin this month — but gaming tokens seem to have missed the memo.

While the broader market is soaring alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum’s recent rally, gaming-related tokens are showing signs of life, but still lagging. According to MMORPG game Calamity co-founder Seva, it’s a credibility problem.

“Trust is broken. Too many raised millions, delivered zero,” Seva said of blockchain games in a recent X post.

As a result of the lack of trust, Seva said gamers have little confidence in any of the gaming tokens and are mainly chasing quick gains. “Short-term mindset dominates selling early,” he said.

“Believers are tired. No wins, just waiting.”

Seva said attention and money are now “spread thin” across too many gaming projects, and it is “time to change that.”

The numbers show a small increase for popular gaming tokens over the past seven days since Bitcoin reached new all-time highs on Binance of $123,100 on July 14.

Ronin (RON) is up 9.09%, Beam (BEAM) is up 9.85% and Axie Infinity (AXS) is up 6.82% over the past seven days, according to CoinMarketCap data.

However, that pales in comparison to Tezos (XTZ), which has risen 67.73%; Ethena (ENA), which is up 47.45%; and Lido DAO (LDO), which has a 42.88% gain over the same period.

No bull run, or are we just waiting for a repeat of 2021?

Respectable gains if you’re in traditional finance. Tragic if you’re in a crypto bull run. 

Some found humor in the fact that gaming tokens still haven’t taken off. Rare Evo co-founder RandCorp said: “Watching a bunch of 30-year-old Web3 gaming bros crash out on the timeline because ‘gaming’ isn’t having a bull run.”

“You might have lost a few years to wasted time, bruv, welcome to learning about opportunity cost,” RandCorp said.

But not everyone sees it as doom and gloom. Crypto gaming commentator Camol is still optimistic, saying, “There’s so much momentum in crypto right now, and people are searching for use cases.”

“This cycle, we definitely have more this time around, but digital ownership + gaming is a massive one,” Camol said.

In the 2021 bull run, gaming tokens didn’t really move until some time after the rest of the market had already pumped. When Bitcoin hit its first local peak of $63,523 in April, gaming assets had yet to take off.

It wasn’t until July, around three months later, that Axie Infinity (AXS), the standout token of the cycle, began its explosive run. Over the next four months, AXS surged 15x, peaking in November, around the same time Bitcoin reached a new yearly high of $69,000.

So, if history repeats, this might just be a delayed start, not a dead end.

The easy hack to get users to new games: Improbable CEO

Why build a brand-new game from scratch when players already love the worlds they’re watching on television?

That’s the thinking of Herman Narula, the CEO of metaverse developer and venture capital firm Improbable, who argues that blockchain game developers should stop obsessing over originality and start leaning into familiar, proven franchises to win players over.

“IP reduces the cost of user acquisition a lot,” he says. “If you’ve got, you know, I’m just making up names here, but Bond or Jurassic Park or John Wick or the Avengers, it’s a hell of a lot easier to get people to play your game,” he explains.

Narula believes this strategy could offer a lifeline to an industry facing a “huge economic crisis.”

“The cost of making someone like you or me buy a new game for free is 40 bucks,” he says.

“You have to spend 40 bucks on ads just to make a punter attempt to play a free game. So it’s almost impossible to launch new titles,” he explains.

Improbable is known for its cloud platform, SpatialOS, which helps build and run large online games and simulations. In 2024, it launched the Somnia blockchain, which now hosts popular Web3 games like the horror survival game Night Spawn and the battle royale Maelstrom. Narula says its one of the few companies still investing in games development.

IP acquisition is a chance for smaller developers to shine

You no longer need to be a massive studio to pick up rights, according to Narula.

“IP owners have started to get a lot more generous with their terms. So they’re willing to offer people, even small teams, a crack at making games with their IP.”

“I think using IP actually creates a lot of discipline and gives people a lot more focus on making gameplay good, rather than, like, inventing a new world, new history, new characters,” he explains.

Original content still has its place, he admits. But these days, IP-backed games “feel like a really good deal.”

Animoca Brands is another games company pursuing an IP strategy. In 2024, television giant ITV partnered with The Sandbox to bring some of its biggest reality shows, such as The Voice, Love Island, and I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, as games in the metaverse.

Peaky Blinders, one of the world’s most popular television shows with 80 million viewers, is also getting a crypto game adaptation in 2026.

Hot Take game review: SaruTobi

It might seem surprising that a game with the simple goal of making a monkey fly as far as possible was once banned from the Apple App Store.

But SaruTobi was removed from the App Store in March 2015 due to its Bitcoin integration and payout features — prohibited under Apple’s stricter policies at the time.  

It was later reinstated, with the developers opting for “in-game Bitcoin” rather than real Bitcoin to fit in with Apple’s anti-crypto rules. Even then, Apple eventually suspended the game again, worried that users might still confuse the in-game currency with actual Bitcoin.

A decade later, SaruTobi is back on the App Store this month following Apple’s change of heart toward cryptocurrency-related apps.

Even better, the game has real Bitcoin integrated. Using ZBD’s Bitcoin Lightning technology, SaruTobi now features Bitcoin microtransactions, allowing players to earn and spend sats in-game through the Lightning Network.

It is the first game that Apple has approved to have Bitcoin microtransactions. 

The game itself is intentionally simple and mindless; you swing a monkey through the jungle, collecting bananas and other rewards, with the primary goal of launching the monkey as far as possible.

Bananas can be used to improve your monkey’s ability with power-ups like rockets, increasing your chances of earning more sats.

These sats can be spent on in-game items like skins or withdrawn to a ZBD wallet. Thankfully, because it uses the Lightning Network, there’s no need to wait for a large balance before withdrawing, players can withdraw even just a few cents worth of Bitcoin instantly.

You’re not going to get rich playing SaruTobi, but being able to earn and withdraw real Bitcoin just by flinging a monkey through the air is a pretty cool win for the Bitcoin community.

Other News:

— South Korean game studio Delab Games is teaming up with AI game maker Verse8 to “create flagship experiences that prove the value of AI-assisted development at scale.”

— Ronin Network has launched the Ronin Creator Rumble, rewarding creators on Ronin with USDC for the best content contributed to the network.

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Ciaran Lyons

Ciaran Lyons is an Australian crypto journalist. He’s also a standup comedian and has been a radio and TV presenter on Triple J, SBS and The Project.