Crypto infrastructure firm Ceden and the studio behind the NFT collection Kanpai Pandas have bought and acquired Raini Studios, the firms announced Wednesday.
The new joint venture is called RJV International DBA Raini Studios, according to a post from the Raini team. The team’s token, RST, is a consolidation of its previous RAINI and PHOTON tokens and will now live on the Avalanche subnet Beam, a gaming network, per CoinGecko data. The token was apparently deployed in late November.
Together, the three teams have already begun work on a new game that they say uses one of the largest combat game IPs in the world, they shared in a Twitch stream. The name of the IP has not yet been revealed, but Ceden co-founder and game industry veteran Michael Haller shared that more details will be revealed “shortly.”
Raini Lead Designer Marty Burgess is now a part of the new, larger studio, and the entire Raini team will stay on post-acquisition, the studio confirmed to Decrypt. Raini Studios is primarily known for its digital trading card game Raini: The Lords of Light, which offers a free-to-play Hearthstone-like gaming experience with tons of crypto memes and optional NFT cards.
Ceden CEO Alex Moody will oversee the new studio post-acquisition. Haller, who previously worked at Electronic Arts and on English versions of anime films like “Akira” and “Ghost in the Shell,” is the new studio’s head of gaming and will lead development on the unannounced combat game with the Raini team.
“Think of this as additive. It’s Raini Studios plus,” Moody said of the news in a Twitch stream Wednesday.
Burgess called the acquisition an “incredible opportunity” to keep the Raini team together.
“I’m gonna put the chance we lose at 2%,” added Kanpai CEO Josh McClean.
Haller also spoke highly of the Raini team, calling Lords of Light “elegantly complex.”
“You couldn’t find better code than they created,” Haller said.
Raini’s crypto ecosystem has historically been multi-chain, offering both Avalanche and BNB Chain compatibility. Now, the team appears to be moving further into the Avalanche ecosystem with its RST token on an Avalanche subnet and RST liquidity pools established on both Avalanche and Ethereum DeFi platforms.
There’s also cross-chain compatibility in the works via a LayerZero integration, which allows traders to turn their existing Raini tokens into RST if desired. A cross-chain integration for Lords of Light card packs is also in the works, with the goal of allowing players to hold their NFTs on whichever chain they prefer, Burgess said in a blog post.
Lords of Light is currently listed on the Epic Games Store, but rival NFT card game Gods Unchained was recently removed from Epic’s store because of an “Adults Only” ESRB rating, which was assigned because Gods offers players NFTs and crypto tokens with “real-world value” for wins.
For its next game, Raini is looking to appeal to audiences beyond the world of crypto—but getting (and keeping) blockchain games on traditional game launchers could become increasingly difficult as crypto games attempt to fit into the broader game market.
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