Blockchain Gaming Unicorn ‘Forte’ Concludes $725m Funding Round

Forte has announced the conclusion of its latest investment round, which raised a total of $725 million from private investors, to support the development of its dedicated, end-to-end platform solution for blockchain-based games that feature NFTs and/or tokenized economies.

Rather than developing video games, Forte is a developer of tools and solutions which can be used by video-game developers. Tools for the development of cryptocurrency-based economies and NFT features for blockchain-based video games. 

The company attained unicorn status back in May after a successful investment round which raised $185 million and a $1 billion valuation. The term unicorn is prevalent amongst the technology and blockchain sector and can be applied to all start-up companies valued at $1b or more. Founded just two years ago, Forte has become a rising star in the fast-growing industry of blockchain-based video games.

Blockchain-based gaming has exploded in popularity over the past few years. As the name suggests: it is a fusion of blockchain technology with video games, an interactive entertainment medium. It is a broad term with a diverse range of examples that fit the definition.

To date, the vast majority of these titles have been more ‘blockchain’ than ‘game’ and were developed by and for cryptocurrency specialists and enthusiasts, or could be categorized as “gambling”. It is only recently, that the popularity of blockchain-based gaming has been proven to the extent that industry-leading video-game companies have started integrating them into their existing business and game design strategies.

For example, Just last month Epic Games Store announced that it would be officially supporting blockchain-based video games on its storefront, which recorded over 160 million users by the end of 2020. This introduces a huge potential audience to these blockchain-based video games and creates an established marketplace for developers and publishers to sell such games to this audience of players.

Another trend catalyzing the growth of blockchain-based games right now is the concept of the ‘metaverse. The metaverse is a technological movement that is currently in a purely theoretical and conceptual stage. We believe that the current convergence of digital consumer and corporate technologies, in addition to active research and development efforts led by blue chips will make the metaverse a reality far sooner than many may expect.

The metaverse is like the internet for digital worlds and interactive platforms, where the digital asset is interoperable and can be carried and used across these different worlds and platforms. It is difficult to explain because it hasn’t been invented yet and different people have their own vision of what the metaverse will be. One of the people attempting to build the metaverse is Mark Zuckerberg, whose social media and virtual reality company Facebook recently announced that it was even changing its name to reflect its new venture into the metaverse (changing to “Meta”).

A significant proportion of speculators also believe that NFTs will likely play a large part in the metaverse. This is because NFTs are representations of ownership for digital assets, with one of the greatest hoped-for benefits being that whilst there may not be much of a utility purpose for NFTs right now, there might be in the future. In the metaverse, where reality, virtual reality, augmented reality, and digital worlds converge.

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