Zynga appears to be backing away from web3 gaming with the sale of its NFT-based game Sugartown.
A series of X posts over the last few days states that a new outfit called D20 Labs has “acquired all products and assets under Sugartown from Zynga.”
According to the posts, D20 Labs’ founders are Zynga’s former VP of web3 gaming Matt Wolf and ex-general manager / head of product for web3 gaming Tommy Ngo. D20 Labs’ marketing lead, known as Camol on X and Discord, has also said he is a cofounder. Carol claimed on X that D20 Labs is “fully comprised of the members of the ex-Zynga Web3 Team.”
There has been very little information released about Sugartown since the game was announced through the below trailer a year ago. Despite that, Sugartown NFTs – know as Oras – have been available to buy on OpenSea since August 2023. According to OpenSea, 493 Sugartown Oras have been sold to date at an average price of 0.1349 ETH, at the time of publication.
“The future is now. Welcome to @D20_Labs. Led by our founders, @mwolf and @tommyngo, we have acquired all products and assets under Sugartown from Zynga,” says a post from the official Sugartown X account.
The X post also said that the move “has been in process for months” and the new owners moved to reassure those who have already bought NFTs linked to the Sugartown project, known as Oras.
“Let us be the FIRST to reassure our holders that our execution will only get better from here,” it continued. “We have assembled a team of some of the top minds in Web2 and Web3 games and are more than ready to embark on this chapter.”
The firm said it will answer more questions about Sugartown’s future in a X Spaces live chat tomorrow. We have also contacted Zynga for clarification on the situation and will update this story if or when we get a reply.
