Polemos, a play-to-earn gaming guild focused on the open-world NFT-based battler game Illuvium, has raised US$2 million in a strategic funding round involving notable global investors.

The round was led by US investment firms Delphi Digital, QCP Soteria and large DeFi fund Framework Ventures, with other participants including decentralised finance founders from SushiSwap, Aave, 1inch Exchange and more.

Polemos aims to build out a multilayered network of players before Illuvium (ILV) launches its beta game in Q1 2022 (likely March).

Adding to its own Discord community and collective of gamers, Polemos plans to draw more members from the vast user network of online-gambling investor and operator Asian Logic, with whom it’s struck up a partnership deal.

Asian Logic has widespread Asia-Pacific presence, owning brands including sports-media company Sporting News and Dafabet. The latter is based in the Philippines and calls itself the “world’s leading online betting site” with more than 1.5 million unique visitors each month.

Timing in close to the launch of Illuvium’s main game, incidentally, the Polemos token sale is also planned for Q1 2022.

 

‘It Impacts the entire blockchain gaming industry’

Commenting on the power of leveraging large, existing networks, Illuvium co-founder Kieran Warwick said: “Polemos partnering with a group the size of Asian Logic impacts the entire blockchain gaming industry, not just Illuvium,” adding:

“Guilds like Polemos will help players enter the metaverse by assisting with capital and onboarding requirements. Meeting the needs of play-to-earn gamers is critical for sparking a mass mainstream adoption of crypto gaming.”

Gaming guilds such as Yield Guild Games (YGG) and Crypto Gaming United (CGU) have already seen significant growth this year, partly through the success of their profit-sharing “scholarship” programs, which help onboard underfunded players in developing nations to play the game Axie Infinity (AXS) and potentially earn a living in the process.

Illuvium, one of the crypto-gaming industry’s most promising and expansive projects in development, has the potential to hugely benefit from the influx of players from gaming guilds – as do ILV holders and indeed all crypto games with solid play-to-earn models and large followings. (Not financial advice, of course.)

Founded by three brothers from Sydney – Kieran, Aaron and Grant Warwick – who employ more than 150 gaming professionals worldwide, the project’s goal is to create a AAA-quality, Pokemon-style battler set in an immersive RPG world. And an environment that plays into the concept of an interoperable “metaverse”.

Since Stockhead first spoke with co-founder Kieran in July, ILV has achieved more than a 7x in price value, and is currently changing hands for about US$1,071, up roughly 3,654 per cent since entering the open market earlier this year.

 

What is a gaming guild?

Very simply, a gaming guild is a collective of gamers that organise to play video games together (usually virtually) and share strategies, tips and data. They’re also sometimes referred to as clans, factions, or communities.

Guilds have been around for decades in the traditional gaming space, but have become more popular in the past few years with the massive rise of esports.

Add the play-to-earn factor to the gaming-community-boosting might of guilds with tens of thousands of members (YGG has more than 60,000 in its Discord), and what you have is pretty significant potential for the acceleration of crypto-gaming adoption.

“Crypto gaming has really come to the forefront over the past year as genuine in-game asset ownership [through NFTs] has enabled new dynamics like play-to-earn,” said Yan Liberman from Delphi Digital. 

Player-run DAOs, or guilds, are a natural product of this new environment and we’re extremely excited to partner with Polemos as they begin their journey within the Illuvium ecosystem.”