Game Studio Behind Matr1x Fire Raises $10 Million for NFT Mobile Shooter

Matr1x, an NFT gaming company based in Singapore, has raised another $10 million in funding for its mobile gaming projects, the firm announced Thursday.

Folius Ventures led the latest A-2 round, with fellow crypto VC firm SevenX named as a co-lead investor. ABCDE Capital, Jambo, Initiate Capital, and Find Satoshi Lab—makers of Stepn and the upcoming Gas Hero game—also invested, according to a statement.

Matr1x has now raised $20 million in VC funding overall, with Thursday’s round doubling the game studio’s $10 million raise completed in 2022.

“Matr1x has real potential in exploring the uncharted for this industry,” Folius Ventures founder Jason Kam said in a statement. Referring to the broader downturn in the crypto industry, he added, “It strikes an elegant balance that may—in the best case—help it achieve critical scale, appeal to the mass market, [and] become sustainably lucrative while side-stepping the Web3 death spiral altogether.”

Matr1x Fire, the studio’s flagship product, is a first-person shooter game for mobile devices where players select from a roster of playable characters and compete on five-person teams to eliminate enemies. The game has a similar aesthetic to Riot Games’ smash shooter Valorant, as Matr1x Fire’s maps, weapons, and character designs echo Riot’s competitive title. 

Matr1x hopes an esports scene springs up for its namesake game, which is still in development. The studio has meanwhile released two NFT collections and plans to release a third collection that will act as a membership pass for “governance access and revenue sharing of its creator economy”—and will also grant buyers an upgradeable battle pet.

It’s worth noting, however, that some gamers are wondering if what happened to NetEase’s mobile title Hyper Front could happen again. In that case, Riot sued Hyper Front publisher Netease for allegedly copying Valorant—and the game was shut down in April as a result. Many gamers have compared Matr1x Fire to Hyper Front in early-access videos, and others have dubbed Matr1x Fire “Valorant mobile” or “Valorant lite.”

Reached for comment, Matr1x clarified to Decrypt via email: “Valorant allows heroes to play skills. However, Matr1x Fire is a CS:GO style game which does not allow heroes to wield special powers or skills. The only way you defeat your opponent is to handle your guns well and control your shooting feedback and recoils. Hyperfront is another category, [which] seemingly did copy and paste Valorant, while our game is much more in the category of CS:GO.”

The game studio also said that it has begun to publish extensive lore for Matr1x Fire online through its Matr1x Worldview Stories, which detail the game’s world and how a war broke out in the year 2061.