Orange Cap Games acquires Moonbirds, implying an upcoming game with the IP

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Hello everyone! It's Kostas - welcome back to the new edition of Gaming Crypto. Today we will be diving deep in NFT collections building games while discussing the acquisitions of the Moonbirds IP from Orange Cap Games.

Moonbirds is officially part of Orange Cap Games

First of all, let’s do a very brief recap of the journey of Orange Cap Games (OCG) and Moonbirds before their paths cross.

Orange Cap Games (OCG) is a game studio, known for the Vibes (Pudgy Penguins Trading Card Game), launched in December 2024. Vibes is based on the Pudgy Penguins IP, one of the most well-known NFT collections. As their announcement of the acquisition stated: "For many of you, Vibes and OCG have been synonymous, but it has always been our ambition to work with more IP properties and do more types of activations." I also connected OCG very closely with the Pudgy IP. It also begs the question: are there more acquisitions of well-known IPs on the way?

Moonbirds emerged as a significant NFT collection in early 2022. The collection's mint price was set at 2.5 ETH, approximately $7,000 at the time, which faced criticism for accessibility but sold out within two days. After all, the NFT hype was at its peak at the time. The average trading price soared to over 40 ETH, entering the top 10 highest-grossing NFT collections.

Apart from the usual access to exclusive communities, Moonbirds also promised first access on Project Highrise, a metaverse project. Fast forward three years – this promise never came close to materialising.

In 2024, Moonbirds was acquired by Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, bringing Moonbirds under their umbrella. This acquisition was part of Yuga Labs' broader strategy, but by early 2025, they began divesting non-core NFT IPs, including CryptoPunks and Meebits, to focus on Bored Ape Yacht Club and the Otherside metaverse.

Creating a game as the solution

Since 2021, many NFTs collections have promised to “add utility” by creating a game or a gamified experience with their IP. It used to be one of the stronger use cases for an NFT collection and a huge hype lever. Almost all have failed to deliver a single playable game.

It can be argued that the NFT collection that has achieved the most in that front was previously the biggest rug in the space. That collection is Pixelmon. After a mint that amassed approximately $70million in ETH at the time and the infamous art reveal that resulted, most notably, in NFTs like Kevin,

the collection got acquired by LiquidX, who has been building towards Pixelmon-branded games ever since. They have worked on or are currently working on four different games; either in small hyper casual games like Pixel Pals and Kevin the Adventurer, or midcore games like their flagship title Warden’s Ascent and Warriors of Novathera.

Other notable examples are Claynosaurz, who announced a mobile game developed by Gameloft in September of ‘24, and anime NFT IP Azuki that was announced earlier this year.

Failures vs Potential Successes

We will not venture into specific NFT collections that didn't deliver the gaming experiences they had promised, as the failures of the past have already been highlighted more than enough times. One thing is certain: NFT sales created misaligned incentives and forced IP owners to promise lofty things (like games) that they had no experience in building. Almost all have either been publicly cancelled or failed, and some never even reached the development stage. They did not only promise games, but games that had extremely ambitious scopes. After all, you can't raise dozens of millions from NFT sales and promise a casual mobile game.

The differences between those failed attempts and the ones that are still going are two clear ones. First of all, they are not promising AAA productions, but focus on cheaper games with smaller development cycles. They achieve that either by shifting to mobile games or building on genres that require smaller production scopes, like OCG did with Vibes. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, they partner with established studios. Pixelmon is doing it the hard way by forming their own studios, but, for example, Claynosaurz partnered with Gameloft, Otherside with Improbable, and Pudgy Penguins with Mythical Games.

That said, it is important to note that this model, building games with IP from NFT collections, still hasn’t showcased a notable success.

Yuga continues divesting

In April 2024 Yuga Labs sold two IPs to Faraway, a Web3 gaming studio/publisher. This move was, at the time, presented as part of their strategic shift to focus on key projects, mainly meaning the Otherside. The two IPs sold were HV-MTL (Heavy Metal Forge) and Legends of the Mara, along with their associated NFT collections. What was surprising is that there was no agreement to build out the games associated with the IPs on Apechain, the chain launched by Yuga.
Not much progress has been shown in building out either of the two IPs.

On the other hand, in a resounding difference, anything built around Moonbirds will either exist on Ethereum’s mainnet, where the collection currently lives, or, if an L2 is needed, Apechain. Exclusively Apechain.

Considering that Yuga sold off the Cryptopunks and Meebits IPs earlier in the year, it has now cleaned house as there are no other IPs remaining, other than Bored Ape Yacht Club of course.

More Gaming & Web3 Stories

• Angry Dynomites Lab, the dinosaur crafting game from Voya Games, who recently raised $5m in fresh funding, announced they will be building on Ronin. (Read more here)

• Claynosaurz raised $5m through its Popkins pack sale on Sui. (Read more here)

• KTTY is a new pet adventure open world game building on Ronin. (Read more here)

• Maplestory Universe is running a streaming bingo competition, on Youtube and Twitch, distributing $200.000 in rewards. (Read more here)

• Onchain Heroes season 2 is now live! (Read more here)

• Planet Mojo is shutting down its games on July 1st. (Read more here)

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