DeHorizon raises funding for metaverse game ecosystem

DeHorizon, a blockchain game company which is making a metaverse game ecosystem, has raised a new round of funding led by Griffin Gaming Partners and Circle Ventures.

DeHorizon will use the money to incubate a portfolio of games and increase the size of the team. The size of the round wasn’t disclosed. The company is making a series of games that are all connected in the same metaverse. The company has multiple pieces, all working on different parts of its metaverse strategy with different names preceded by “De.”

This latest strategic round of financing follows DeHorizon’s $8.5 million funding round in October 2021, which was led by Sfermion and Dragonfly Capital. DeHorizon is creating a blockchain-based team battle DeVerse.

DeHorizon is led by gaming veterans who previously held roles at Riot, Dungeons & Dragons, and Blizzard, as well as Web 3 experts who have years of experience in the fintech and blockchain industries.

After the founding of DeHorizon, the team immediately set out to develop three different games with the underlying motive to emphasize “play for fun and to earn.”

DeHorizon’s upcoming flagship game experiences include DeVerse, a team battle game. After a great war breaks out in the City of Dawn between Akademia and Shaharism, players have to battle and try their best to occupy the City of Dawn for victory.

It’s also working on the battle royale DeTournament, which is a game set in “extreme outer space.” The goal is to be the last ones standing in the deathmatch and survive on the massive map with treasures and traps.

It’s also working on the dragon-racing game DeMythical, an arena game for both players and viewers. It offers huge prizes as the impetus for intense contests. But high returns usually come with high risks.

Apart from the games publicly announced to the community, DeHorizon is also incubating a game titled Effigy, which is a medieval fantasy game in a mysterious, mountainous region.

The longer-term vision of the DeHorizon metaverse is to create a virtual carnival open to all metaverse inhabitants across multiple blockchains.

While there is a lot of competition with the massive influx of Web 3 projects and blockchain games, DeHorizon is focusing on long-term value through connected experiences that involve both great gameplay and deep social connections formed through immersive virtual environments, the company said.

“As a huge gamer by myself, I’ve been seeing and playing so many GameFi blockchain games in the past two years,” said Shane Zhu, CEO of DeHorizon, in an email to GamesBeat. “They are not really games, lacking fun and social, too focus on play to earn and making gaming a financial ‘tool.’ I think this is completely wrong for the next-gen game.”

Zhu added, “In my mind, the Web 3 game should be community-driven plus fun plus interactive. The game itself is not going to be controlled by the developer. The players should decide what’s next for the game. So that’s how DeHorizon came up. We aim to become the next generation of metaverse game ecosystems, enabling players to create, socialize, enjoy blockchain-based games with their friends. The long-term vision of the DeHorizon metaverse is to create a virtual carnival open to all metaverse inhabitants across multiple chains. That lets players enjoy a second life.”

The company is actively working with nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to enable experiences in its metaverse – this is where DeMeta comes into play as the first interoperable, editable and evolvable ERC-721 NFT, composed of six customizable attributes and a character profile stored on-chain within 256 bytes customized by players themselves.

DeHorizon believes developing a diverse offering of games with play-to-earn mechanics is an important step in ensuring utility and growth of the metaverse as a whole. Allowing players to have a connection between multiple games is the first stage of the DeHorizon metaverse.

The company remains close to infrastructure developments in Web 3 so it can participate in interoperability across other metaverse platforms and across blockchain protocols when the opportunity arises. The company has created a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for governance.

“We are thrilled to have been voted into DeHorizon DAO and to be partnering with this very additive group of investors. Shane’s enthusiasm and vision for the metaverse is exciting and inspiring, and the team has a strong gaming and creative track records to match,” said Phil Sanderson, a cofounder of Griffin Gaming Partners, in a statement.

In addition to the strategic investment round, Griffin Gaming Partners has joined DeHorizon DAO as a DeGuardian alongside Binance Labs, Dragonfly Capital, and Sfermion. Prior to DeHorizon, Griffin Gaming Partners has invested in several gaming infrastructure and virtually immersive platforms, such as Discord, Forte, and Wave.

“We’re excited by the growth and mainstream adoption of blockchain gaming and the metaverse”, said Jeremy Fox-Geen, CFO of Circle, “and are even more excited to be supporting DeHorizon as their all-star team builds the next generation of metaverse game ecosystems.”

In an email to GamesBeat, Zhu said the DAO governance is an “indispensable step to make DeHorizon an autonomous, dimensional, and flourishing metaverse Game Ecosystem, promoting the development of the creator economy.”

“DeHorizon DAO is made up of DeVoice and DeGuardian. One of the original intentions to launch DeHorizon DAO was to carefully listen to the voices of DeHorizon fans around the world,” Zhu said. “So we kindly call them DeVoice. Meanwhile, we also need valuable advice and opinions from industry pioneers to guard our DAO. We respect them as DeGuardian.”

The venture capital firms will help propel DeHorizon to become a contender in metaverse game experiences. DeHorizon believes that continuing to optimize the entry threshold of the game will create an “on-ramp” for new players around the globe into the web3-powered metaverse.

The company has 60 people in its Shanghai studio at 8gg Yolk Studio; 15 in its Austin, Texas studio at DeMeta. And so the DeHorizon Foundation has a total of 75 people. He started the company with his cofounders in April 2021.

Zhu said the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game will start internal testing on February 22nd. The official release will be in April 2022. The second title FPS/battle royal game will start internal testing in May.