The Forge Arena Joins Epic Games Store: A Milestone for Blockchain Gaming
In a big move for blockchain games, the world’s fastest-growing gaming marketplace will be adding the WAX-powered tactical FPS to their storefront.
The first WAX-powered game is hitting the Epic Games Store!
Today, NEWGEN Labs – developers of WAX-based tactical FPS The Forge Arena – announced that the competitive shooter will soon be available on the Epic Games Store, created by Fortnite developers, Epic Games.
Led by former OPSkins lead Artur ‘m1nac’ Minacov, The Forge Arena – which has spent a purported 5 years in development – will become available to the 30 million+ active users of the Epic Games Store.
The Epic Games Store includes Fortnite and Fall Guys, plus EOS-based Blankos Block Party
Epic will be powering The Forge Arena’s upcoming closed beta, which will be split into multiple phases over the next several months, ahead of an open beta release during E3 2023, held in Los Angeles in June of next year.
The current alpha experience will be closed this evening, in expectation of the game becoming available on the Epic Games Store in December 2022. At this point, the game will become free-to-play, with the long-awaited matchmaking feature enabled.
Artur ‘m1nac’ Minacov, Creative Director at NEWGEN Labs, said;
“The opportunity to distribute The Forge Arena to traditional gamers via the Epic Games Store is a huge opportunity for our studio. Our focus has always been to build a fun, competitive and unique game first, and to use blockchain technologies to give our players true ownership of their digital items.
Players will be able to use their Epic Games or Forge Arena account to sign in and get started, without any requirement to understand crypto or NFTs. Our team is focused on bridging the gap between traditional gaming and blockchain gaming, and our Closed Beta phases will show the world that Web3 games have what it takes to change the way we play and consume video games across the next several decades.”
Opinion
Looks like Blankos Block Party was just the start!
With Grit in development, Blankos and a Star Atlas demo now live, and The Forge Arena on its way, it seems Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney’s words of support towards blockchain game developers weren’t just empty words.
Once Grit and The Forge Arena go live on the Epic Games Store, that will make it four different blockchains – Ethereum, WAX, EOS and Solana – in as many games on the storefront, so it’ll be interesting to see how Epic plan to tackle the ease-of-access and onboarding issues that plague blockchain games currently.
Regardless, this is big news not just for The Forge Arena, but for the WAX blockchain itself – and I look forward to seeing the reaction over the coming days.
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COO & founder of NFT Insider. Bullish on web3. Competitive soul.