Sky Mavis soft launches Axie Infinity: Origin and raises $150M

The firm behind the popular game Axie Infinity, Sky Mavis, just announced the early access launch of its free-to-play game Axie Infinity: Origin, which is the more accessible web-based brand new game in the Axie franchise.

This launch happens a week after the hack of Sky Mavis' Ronin Network, where thieves stole over $600 million from Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity players. This means that there's a lot at stake at the launch to restore Sky Mavis' confidence.

Though there's a lot of pressure for the game to succeed, Sky Mavis also announced on Wednesday that it had raised a $150 million investment led by Binance to reimburse users' funds lost in the Ronin attack. Venture capital firms a16z, Dialectic, Paradigm, and Accel also took part in the funding round. The company believes that this should alleviate any fears that anyone would have regarding the firm's ability to satisfy immediate working capital needs.

The gaming firm stated that the funds from the new round, along with Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity's balance sheets, will make sure that affected users are reimbursed.

Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO, stated that the company believes Sky Mavis will bring a lot of value and growth to the larger industry and that it's necessary to support them as they work hard to resolve the recent incident.

Binance also announced on Wednesday that deposits and withdrawals on the Ronin network had been completely restored after the service was temporarily suspended last week.

SOURCE: VentureBeat