Who is building web3 games? The companies to know

The companies that matter

Disclosure: this article covers blockchain-based games. Gaming Trend Wire does not offer financial advice and does not speculate on token prices.

Web3 gaming is dominated by a handful of studios and platform companies, and they fall into two camps. Some build the games. Some build the blockchains and tools that games run on, and often do both. Knowing who is who makes the whole space much easier to read, so here are the names worth knowing as of September 2026 and what each one actually delivers.

A quick distinction to keep in mind. A studio makes games. A chain or platform provides the rails, the wallets and the marketplaces. Several of the biggest players, such as Immutable and Sky Mavis, do both, which is part of why they have lasted.

It is also worth noting how few names really move the sector. After the shakeout of the past few years, a small group of studios and platforms accounts for most of the players, most of the funding and most of the games worth trying. The long tail of tiny projects still exists, but it matters far less than it did in 2021.

Sky Mavis and Immutable

Sky Mavis is the studio behind Axie Infinity, the game that launched the play-to-earn boom, and it also operates Ronin, a gaming-focused blockchain. Ronin became a hub after Axie, and in February 2024 the social farming MMO Pixels migrated onto it from Polygon, a move that lifted Ronin's activity sharply, according to VentureBeat. Sky Mavis therefore sits at the center of both a landmark game and one of web3 gaming's busier networks.

Immutable, founded in 2018 and based in Sydney, is the other pillar. It runs Immutable X and the newer Immutable zkEVM, chains designed specifically for games, and it makes its own titles including the card game Gods Unchained and the mobile RPG Guild of Guardians, per Wikipedia. Its platform hosts a large catalogue of third-party games, which makes Immutable as much an infrastructure company as a studio. If a web3 game runs smoothly and hides the crypto behind a normal login, there is a good chance Immutable's tools are involved.

The two companies also show two routes to staying relevant. Sky Mavis built its position on a single blockbuster game and then turned the network around it into a home for others. Immutable came at it from the platform side first, building the rails and then adding its own games on top. Both approaches have survived the downturn, which is more than most can say.

Gunzilla, Animoca and Mythical

Gunzilla Games is the newest heavyweight, a studio building the cyberpunk battle royale Off the Grid with narrative direction from film-maker Neill Blomkamp. It also runs its own network, GUNZ, and has a 1.0 full release scheduled for October 2026, according to Wikipedia and Dot Esports. Gunzilla stands out for aiming at a mainstream shooter audience rather than a crypto-native one.

Animoca Brands is less a single studio than a sprawling web3 conglomerate, an investor and publisher with a large portfolio that includes The Sandbox and stakes in many other games and tokens. It functions as a kind of venture engine for the sector. Mythical Games, meanwhile, has pursued big sports licences. It makes the mobile game NFL Rivals and, in partnership with FIFA, launched FIFA Rivals in 2026, and it reported passing 650 million completed transactions across its titles, according to Decrypt and GAMES.GG. Mythical's bet is that recognisable sports brands can bring web3 games to ordinary mobile players.

These three round out the picture. Gunzilla is chasing the mainstream shooter crowd, Mythical is leaning on globally recognised sports brands, and Animoca sits behind a wide slice of the sector as a backer rather than a single-game studio. Different bets, but the same underlying wager, that web3 gaming reaches ordinary players only by putting a genuinely appealing game or brand in front of them.

What their strategies reveal

Put together, these companies show where the industry has landed after the 2021 boom. The platform players, Immutable and Sky Mavis, are betting that the winning move is to own the rails and make the blockchain invisible to players. The studio players, Gunzilla and Mythical, are betting on reaching mainstream audiences through a genuinely fun shooter or a familiar sports licence, with the crypto kept optional or in the background.

The common thread is a retreat from the loud earn-first messaging of a few years ago. In 2026 the pitch from serious companies is about games and ownership, not income. That does not guarantee success, and several of these firms have cut costs or seen their tokens fall heavily, but it is a more sustainable posture than the one that produced the last crash.

Our take

If you want to understand web3 gaming, watch these companies rather than the token charts. Immutable and Sky Mavis tell you where the infrastructure is going. Gunzilla and Mythical tell you whether the sector can reach players who do not care about crypto at all, which is the real test of whether any of this lasts.

We report on what these companies build and ship, and we do not offer financial advice or comment on where their tokens are heading. The healthiest sign in 2026 is that the biggest names are competing on games and platforms, not on promises of easy money.

For readers, the shortcut is to follow the builders rather than the tokens. The companies that keep shipping playable games and useful platforms are the ones shaping what web3 gaming becomes, whatever the wider market does around them.