Two weeks after unveiling itself as a separate organization called D20 Labs, Zynga’s former web3 team has announced Royal Nutz Poker Club as its first standalone title. 

Coming out of Zynga, the team is obviously building on the success of its multi-billion dollar franchise Zynga Poker. Indeed, D20 argues that poker is a great bridge to unite users from all sets of gaming, including offline, online, and onchain.

To that end, the first stage is a teaser event, which will be rolled out exclusively to holders of its Sugartown platform’s Ora NFTs. 

Following that, the game will launch to selected partner communities, with the first being ApeCoin holders. Players will get passes airdropped in both soulbound and tradable versions. Access will also be gated by the same energy system used for Sugartown’s demos, which is generated by staking your NFTs.

Overall, D20 hopes Royal Nutz Poker Club will synergize social casino and blockchain assets. However, significantly, this will be done without getting players to wager real money so D20 won’t have to get expensive and time-consuming gambling licenses.

Instead, success in the game will be controlled via leaderboards, with prizes provided through sponsored tournaments.

Launching on Coinbase’s Ethereum-based L2 Base, Royal Nutz Poker Club will support mobile and browser.

One year on following the unveiling of Sugartown, project leads Matt Wolf and Tommy Ngo have announced D20 Labs.

Notably the new entity has acquired “all products and assets under Sugartown from Zynga”, with Wolf, who was Zynga’s head of blockchain, becoming D20’s new CEO. As per the announcement, D20 says it’s now “full steam ahead to create the future of rewarded play”.

Due to the lack of activity surrounding Sugartown for most of 2024, the acquisition news makes sense. Reading between the lines, the project has likely been stalled by Zynga or its ultimate owner Take Two, holding the creators of Sugartown back. 

For instance, the new marketing lead at D20, called Camol on X, commented, “We really acquired the product we made inside one of the biggest games companies in the world and brought it independent so we are able to operate at the level web3 requires”.

A day after the news, Sugartown also announced its chapter 1 kickoff.

The reception from the community has been torn. Although some are welcoming the news, others are calling the project “grossly marketed as all hype and no substance”. Crypto degen Grail says “Without Zynga, what are you exactly? You’ve built nothing lasting here outside of the Zynga narrative”.

Another outspoken web3 enthusiast on X Jonah asking “Is the big announcement that Zynga divested? Isn’t that why people liked sugartown?”

In September 2023, Sugartown minted its first NFTs. The 9,999-strong Ora collection acted as access passes into the game, while also enabling holders to stake them to generate the energy required to play the Sugartown mini-games.

Details are still sparse but for more info check out the D20 Labs website and X channel, including an X space to be held on Wednesday 3rd September at 15:30 EST.