Decrypt’s Art, Fashion, and Entertainment Hub. Discover SCENEMythical Games kick-started a Super Bowl promotion on Thursday for its NFT-infused mobile game NFL Rivals, unlocking new cards exclusive from this year’s top teams, the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles.The two-week promotion will bring to bear 30 new player cards of different rarities that players can earn via packs or campaigns. In addition to the new cards, the promotion will offer a variety of ways for users to earn rewards—including via Hero Events, where users can choose between two star offensive or defensive players to compete.In each week of the promotion, users will receive a ticket to participate in the selected Hero Event.NFL Rivals Super Bowl LIX is spicy!Players? ✅Chases? ✅Events? ✅Predictions? ✅ Read more below ⬇️🌶️🔥 pic.twitter.com/DdOM5UBmMH — NFL Rivals 🏈 (@PlayNFLRivals) February 5, 2025Additionally, users can earn rewards based on what is happening in the real Super Bowl game this coming Sunday. Players will have the opportunity to play live events tied to real moments in the game, and also wager in-app items like coins and gems on outcomes like the coin toss or the final score.NFL Rivals is available for free download via iOS and Android devices. The game, which features tap and play football with real NFL players, operates similarly to the Ultimate Team mode from EA Sports titles like Madden or FIFA.Limited edition cards in the game are minted as NFTs on the Mythos blockchain, a gaming-centric chain built on Polkadot technology, where they can be traded with the MYTHOS token on the Mythical Market.Decrypt reached out to Mythical Games about whether the new Super Bowl cards are available as tradable NFTs, but did not immediately receive a response.NFL Rivals has been downloaded more than 6 million times to date across platforms, according to Mythical Games. The game has earned more than 70,000 downloads via the iOS App Store in the last month, generating more than $200,000 in revenue during that time according to data from Sensor Tower.Mythical Games has raised $297 million since 2018 across multiple rounds, per data from Crunchbase, attracting notable investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Animoca Brands, ARK Invest, and NBA legend Michael Jordan in the process.The firm is also working on an officially licensed FIFA Rivals game, as well as a Pudgy Penguins game called Pudgy Party.Edited by Andrew Hayward

Electronic Arts (EA), the video game giant whose soccer simulations have long dominated the genre, has hit an unexpected rough patch. The company’s largest gaming franchise, which rebranded from FIFA to EA Sports FC last year, is experiencing slower-than-anticipated sales and engagement. EA shares slid more than 16% on January 23, marking their steepest single-day drop in nearly 17 years.EA’s Soccer Rebrand FaltersFor decades, EA’s FIFA franchise reliably delivered a sizable chunk of the company’s revenue. According to Visible Alpha, EA’s soccer titles and linked Ultimate Team service have historically accounted for nearly half of EA’s total net bookings. After the switch to EA Sports FC in 2023, the initial reception was decent; however, the latest iteration which launched in September appears to be struggling.EA has cut its net bookings forecast for the fiscal year ending in March by up to $650 million, primarily due to the underperformance of its soccer business. The recent shortfall contrasts sharply with FIFA’s traditional resilience, raising concerns about where EA’s growth will come from if its biggest franchise can’t regain its footing

We’ll look back on 2024 as a very good year for GameFi. There have been few bona fide smash hits that have “pulled an Axie” and gotten mainstream gamers FOMO’ing in, it’s true. But quietly, the foundations have been built for an industry that appears poised to stand the test of time and whose future is no longer reliant on pumpamentals.In 2024 we saw games launched with sustainable token economies; the rise of tap-to-earn mini-games; the blurring of video gaming and GameFi; and the emergence of Polkadot as a serious gaming chain. Much of this success has been thanks to Mythical Games, whose NFL Rivals release has shown that there is a product-market fit for GameFi titles that tap into a ready-made fanbase.Polkadot’s Big Year of GamingPolkadot was conceived as a general-purpose web3 chain, and it remains so but is beginning to find its core competencies. Just as Solana has become the memecoin network of choice and EVM L2s have proven ideal for onchain perps and prediction markets, Polkadot is proving that its architecture is well suited to hosting gaming.Much of this is simply down to the scalability of the main chain and its interconnected parachains, which can handle high-volume dapps without performance degradation. This is achieved while keeping network fees negligible