SAN FRANCISCO – February 26, 2024 – Forge, a platform designed to reward gamers for playing the most promising upcoming games, announces today strategic relationships with leading blockchain gaming protocols Avalanche, Immutable, Polygon, Ronin, Solana, and Sui.
As part of this collaboration, Forge will support wallet connections with each protocol thus enabling game developers to track players’ on-chain progress and seamlessly distribute digital rewards, directly via Forge. This reduces layers of friction so that games can easily incentivize player engagement, and players can claim and collect rewards for their gaming achievements.
Also part of this collaboration, the Forge team is working with each protocol to identify and highlight the most promising up-and-coming titles in their ecosystems, in order to leverage the growing Forge community, now more than 300,000 registered users strong, to drive organic community interest and awareness.
"As gamers ourselves, we are huge fans of what Forge has set out to accomplish with their platform," said Ed Chang, Head of Gaming at Ava Labs. "Incorporating Avalanche and Forge will make it easier for game developers to find an audience and reward gamers for joining their communities."
"The Forge team is building something very unique that connects game developers to real, verified gamers," said Di Pearson, Strategic Growth Partnerships at Mysten Labs, creators of Sui. "We're excited to work hand-in-hand with the Forge team to support developers and the community alike."
"We've been impressed by the speed at which Forge has grown to become a staple of how games launch and engage their communities," said Bailey Tan, Head of Ecosystem at Ronin. "We look forward to continuing to work with Forge to elevate the best games on the Ronin network."
“We are thrilled to have our ecosystem partners supporting the Forge platform. They have been instrumental in helping the next generation of game developers, with Forge focused on connecting gamers with the next generation of games.” said Kun Gao, CEO of Forge. “It’s been fantastic building direct relationships with the major protocols that power gaming. Our missions are closely aligned, and we’re excited to work to drive interest and awareness for the best games on their platforms.”
Forge recently celebrated the launch of Forge Season 1 where they announced a slew of new features, core platform improvements, and tentpole game partners.
Founded by gaming pioneer Dennis “Thresh” Fong, Crunchyroll founder Kun Gao, and Cyence founder George Ng, Forge originated as a project within GGWP, an AI-powered game moderation platform that the team launched in 2020, Forge’s mission is to help gamers unlock the value of their gaming profiles and be rewarded for their contributions to gaming communities.
The platform launched in late 2023 with an $11 million seed funding round, led by Makers Fund, BITKRAFT Ventures, and Animoca Brands, with participation from Hashkey Capital, Polygon Ventures, Formless Capital and Adaverse. Forge’s existing investors include industry-leading strategics such as Griffin Gaming Partners, Riot Games, and Sony Innovation Fund. Forge’s angel investors include gaming industry leaders Riot Games founder Marc Merrill, Twitch founders Emmett Shear and Kevin Lin, TSM founder Dan Dinh, Kabam founders Kevin Chou and Holly Liu, YouTube founder Steve Chen, Krafton CEO CH Kim, former Discord CMO Eros Resmini (The Mini Fund), and ESL founder Ralf Reichart.
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About Forge
Forge is the first gaming platform that allows gamers to aggregate their gaming life and achievements into a single profile, and earn rewards based on their participation. The company is backed by leading investors and game companies including Makers Fund, BITKRAFT Ventures, Animoca Brands, Riot Games, and Sony Innovation Fund, and is founded by seasoned entrepreneurs in gaming and nerd culture. The Forge beta is now available at forge.gg.
