The model that promised players a new digital economy left most holding worthless tokens. A Latvian game studio thinks it has found a better way.
The play-to-earn boom ended badly. Games that promised real income through NFTs and in-game tokens saw those assets lose nearly all their value. Dozens of projects shut down or stalled.
By the end of 2025, funding in the sector had fallen 70%, and more than $2 billion was lost to hacks, scams, and project failures in a single year.
Why play-to-earn failed
The model was structurally flawed from the start. P2E games relied on constantly issuing new tokens, flooding the market and driving down the value of in-game assets over time.
Most projects only survived as long as they could bring in new players willing to buy in. When demand dried up, the tokens collapsed and the games followed.
“Play-to-earn was marketed as a way for everyday gamers to profit,” says the CEO of Beetroot Lab, a Riga-based mobile game studio valued at $100 million after a recent fundraising round.
“What people don’t always realise is that these models were never really about gaming. They were about speculation. Once the hype died down, most projects collapsed.”
The ownership model
A growing number of developers are now experimenting with what they call “play-to-own,” or P2O. The idea is straightforward: instead of earning tokens that can be cashed out, players own parts of the game itself.
Assets can be kept, traded, or sold, with their value tied to the player community rather than a token system designed to inflate and collapse.
Beetroot Lab’s flagship game, Zeeverse, is one of the clearest examples of this approach. It is a free-to-play mobile game set in an indigenous-inspired open world, blending creature collection and exploration.
Its land sale system lets players own strategic sections of the in-game economy. NFT land sales have reached $2 million to date.
“When players know their assets belong to them, it changes everything about how they play,” says Edgars Vecozoliņš, founder of Zeeverse and Beetroot Lab.
The game has attracted backing from Mechanism Capital and Cherubic Ventures, an early investor in Coinbase and Slack.
Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch, is also among its individual supporters.
Removing pressure tactics
Beetroot Lab says the shift goes beyond economics.
Most free-to-play games use psychological pressure to keep players logging in, spending money, and chasing rewards they may never reach.
Zeeverse has removed what its team calls dark patterns: forced daily logins, artificial progress barriers, and fear-of-missing-out mechanics.