Sunsetting YGG Play: Yield Guild Games Lays off 35 in Major Shift Away From Crypto Game Publishing

Yield Guild Games blamed the events of 10/10, one of the largest crypto crashes ever, for the bear market that ultimately led to the sunset of this business unit. YGG reported that 35 people will be laid off and that it will not pivot to the AI data economy.

Key Takeaways

• YGG shut down its Web3 publishing arm, YGG Play, cutting 35 jobs to survive a brutal crypto bear market.
• YGG retired its Play website and social platforms, ending the publisher’s $9 million lifetime revenue.
• YGG is pivoting to provide AI gaming datasets, extending its operating runway to four years with $20.6M.

YGG Play Goes Down as Yield Guild Games Redirects Business Model to AI

Yield Guild Games (YGG), a global gaming collective founded in 2020 as the play-to-earn movement rose, has taken action to secure its survival in an ecosystem increasingly driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

On Monday, the company revealed it would sunset YGG Play, its Web3 publishing arm, as external economic realities hit its business model.

Even as YGG Play, which pioneered what YGG called the casual degen games space, received lifetime revenue of over $9 million, it was unable to attain commercial sustainability in today’s “brutal” games publishing market.

The company partly blamed the October 10, 2025, crash and its aftermath for the bear market the crypto industry faces, leading to this decision, and stressed that it is unlikely to be reversed in the short term.

“Ultimately, the 10/10 crash fundamentally altered retail market psychology, and we do not expect the crypto consumer market or the Web3 games publishing market to recover sufficiently in the near term,” YGG stressed.

With this decision, 35 people employed by YGG Play lost their jobs, and the YGG Play website and all its social handles will be retired. “Although this business unit is sunsetting, YGG’s vision and mission hasn’t changed. We are still fully dedicated to using technology to open up new economic opportunities for people globally,” said Gabby Dizon, co-founder of YGG.

YGG will pivot its business to AI, aiming to become a gaming dataset provider for other companies seeking specialized info to train their models. “To solve real-world strategic problems, AI neural networks cannot rely on sterile logic alone; they must understand human irrationality and emergent behavior,” it assessed, hinting at the next steps to ensure its survival.

The decision extends YGG’s operating runway to 4 years with $20.6 million in its treasury.