A growing domain of developers are eyeing Telegram as the new opportunity to scale their games.
South Korean studio Delabs is the latest to launch a mini-game within the platform — its baseball-themed Giga Chad Bat; “Hit ball, get BALL”.
While the team’s flagship title Rumble Racing Star has quickly grown to become the top game on Arbitrum since migrating from Polygon earlier in 2024, Giga Chad Bat marks a new strategic direction.
“Launching Giga Chad Bat on Telegram is a big swing for Delabs, expanding our reach and creating a more accessible gaming experience, especially for players that may be novices to web3 gaming,” commented Delabs Games CEO Joonmo Kwon.
Another move comes from centralised crypto exchange OKX. Its Telegram-game OKX Racer gets players to guess the price of Bitcoin within a set timeframe. The team especially highlights the platform’s seamless game integration and opportunity to reach a wider crypto community.
OKX chief innovation officer Jason Lau said: “Telegram’s mini-app platform is quickly becoming a can’t-miss venue for those who are looking to engage the crypto community. At OKX, we want to embrace easy-to-use, interoperable and accessible platforms that cultivate communities, incentivize participation and encourage fun.”
In terms of Telegram itself, the company is undergoing significant updates to enhance its gaming integrations. Founder and CEO Pavel Durov recently unveiled on his Telegram channel that the company plans to launch a mini-app store for Telegram/TON games, as well as an in-app browser with web3 support.
Around 400 million of Telegram’s 900 million users are claimed to use the platform’s mini-apps. According to Durov, and other prominent names in the industry, this makes the platform a great opportunity to introduce web3 to “hundreds of millions of people”.
One particular focus of tap games on Telegram is their generous reward systems, allowing players to earn points or tokens just through clicking.
Tap game Hamster Kombat has quickly risen to fame, as has Catizen and most recently Pixelverse’s PixelTap. While only a handful of games have launched a token, Pixelverse’s PIXFI token went live on Friday 19th July, and surged 304% within the first 48 hours. It has since dropped but remains up over 100% from launch.
In related news, Animoca Brands has announced a strategic partnership between the MOCA Foundation and the TON Foundation as part of a $20 million strategic growth deal.
