TL;DR
- ChronoForge shuts down on December 30, 2025, after failing to secure new funding.
- The project exhausted $4.4 million and cut 80% of staff amid financial struggles.
- A major multiplayer flaw required rewriting 75% of the code, causing a year-long delay.
ChronoForge, the blockchain-based multiplayer action RPG from Minted Loot Studios, will cease operations on December 30, 2025, after failing to secure additional financing. The closure follows a funding shortfall that left the studio operating on personal funds and forced deep staff cuts, which in turn undermined token utility and the long-term viability of the project. The studio’s postmortem and industry reports detail protracted financial challenges, technical setbacks, and market headwinds that together ended the project.
Funding, team and technical challenges
Minted Loot Studios confirmed the shutdown and cited protracted financial difficulties and unsuccessful rescue talks with venture capital firms, publishers and blockchain networks, according to the studio’s postmortem reported by industry outlets.
Total funding for the project reached $4.4m, including an earlier $3m raise tied to the initial $RIFT token, while the company’s original development budget had been $2m. Since January the team reduced headcount by 80% and, from July, remaining staff worked without pay, as multiple acquisition and partnership discussions collapsed, with some chains withdrawing mid-negotiation.
A major technical failure required a near-complete overhaul, as developers rewrote more than 75% of the codebase to address a fundamental multiplayer flaw, a process that consumed most remaining resources and delayed delivery by over a year.
Two planned token-launch funding events—targeted for April and November 2024—were aborted after last‑minute multiplayer playtest failures. Although the game achieved Early Access on the Epic Games Store with an Epic rating of 4.2 and the studio became an approved Nintendo Switch publisher, those milestones did not translate into sustainable financing.
Token utility, monetization and market context
The Rift Foundation, a primary backer, decided against launching the $CHRONO token because the game would lack ongoing utility without a viable live product; the Foundation also said it had exhausted its capacity to fund continuation.
Player complaints and the studio’s postmortem highlighted core design and monetization problems, with users describing the title as “a joyless, shallow MMORPG” and criticizing a “brutal pay‑to‑win model“, according to the postmortem summary.
Key monetization figures cited included many playable races and classes requiring NFT ownership or in‑game purchases (class access around 20,000 Forge Stamps, roughly $10), $5 inventory pages, NFT floor prices near $380, and $26 Founder’s Pass for leaderboard participation; those mechanics depressed retention and undermined the revenue profile required to attract institutional recyclers of capital.
The postmortem placed ChronoForge’s failure within the broader “crypto winter” that hit 2022–2023 and the collapse of enforced royalty systems, which it said wiped out roughly 90% of Web3 game projects.
By 2025 investors demanded fully operational, high‑yield games before deploying capital; comparative funding shows larger peers raising significantly more (one cited peer exceeded $17.9m).
“Without a viable, ongoing game, the token lacked any meaningful utility,” the postmortem noted, summarizing the Rift Foundation’s reasoning for halting the token launch.
ChronoForge’s shutdown reflects a convergence of technical debt, aggressive monetization, and a tightened funding environment that together made continuation untenable.
For treasuries and institutional players, the case underscores the need for clear utility and demonstrable product stability before committing capital to tokenized gaming projects. Next verified milestone: studio operations end on December 30, 2025.
