Yield Guild Games (YGG) has launched its own publishing division named YGG Play to develop and distribute games directly under its own brand.

The first release under this new initiative is LOL Land, a browser-based board game that went live this week on Abstract Chain, with over 100,000 users pre-registered ahead of launch. The game incorporates token rewards and features characters from the Pudgy Penguins community.

The shift in strategy follows years of volatility in the blockchain gaming sector, with many projects struggling to retain long-term users. YGG’s new approach is focused on targeting existing crypto users, rather than attempting to appeal to broader gaming audiences.

What is YGG Play?

YGG Play is the new publishing arm of Yield Guild Games but unlike YGG’s previous model, which centred on asset delegation and game investment, this division focuses on producing and distributing games internally.

The goal, according to YGG, is to design games that reflect the behaviours and interests of people already active in cryptocurrency, NFT trading, and blockchain-based platforms.

Co-founder Gabby Dizon said the move reflects lessons learned since YGG’s founding in 2020. The company believes its experience in both traditional and blockchain gaming has informed a more targeted strategy that focuses on simpler, shorter-form games.

What games are on the platform?

The first title to launch on YGG Play is LOL Land, a web-based board game with four themed maps: YGG City, Beach Day, Carnival, and Ice World Wonderland. In the game, players can choose between a free mode, which allows unlimited rolls, or a premium mode that includes token rewards. Points earned in premium mode are tied to a $10 million pool of YGG tokens, which can be used within the broader YGG ecosystem.

YGG has not yet announced additional titles under the YGG Play label, but it has indicated that future projects will continue to prioritise crypto-native users over conventional gaming audiences. The company is not positioning itself to compete with large-scale game studios, but rather to provide lightweight, blockchain-based games for a niche but active user base.

Dizon noted that whilst developing games on emerging technologies is challenging, YGG sees continued potential in the space. Future releases from YGG Play are expected to build on the lessons of LOL Land and further explore how blockchain mechanics can be integrated into simple, accessible game formats.

The headquarters, called “Constellation”, is planned for Taipei’s Beitou district. Huang explained during the Computex trade show on May 19 that the new building will serve as a central hub for the company’s growing operations in the region.

Nvidia also partners with the Taiwanese government and Foxconn’s Big Innovation Group to build a large AI supercomputer. The system will be installed at the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) and will use over 10,000 of Nvidia’s new Blackwell GPUs.

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According to Nvidia, this setup will deliver over eight times the performance of Taiwania 2, the current leading supercomputer in Taiwan.

The machine will include several types of Nvidia hardware, such as HGX H200 systems, Blackwell Ultra B300 units, and GB200 NVL72 racks. All components will be linked using the company’s Quantum InfiniBand network technology.

The supercomputer will be used by universities, research institutions, and Nvidia’s major partner, TSMC. According to NCHC Director General Chau-Lyan Chang, the system will help with AI development, quantum computing, and other advanced research areas.

Some of the first projects it will support include TAIDE, a government initiative to create large language models focused on Taiwanese culture and language. Another program, Taiwan AI RAP, will provide a platform for building generative AI tools.

On May 8, Apple announced it is developing new microchips for upcoming products, including smart glasses and AI tools. What did the company say about it? Read the full story.

Both land area and active users increased this month in OpenSim, possibly because people are spending more time inside, where it’s warm.

But who knows, really, why people do what they do?

Anyway, I am now tracking a total of 2,6617 public grids, of which 290 were active this month and 231 published their statistics. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.

This month, OSgrid was the largest grid by land area, with 35,614 standard region equivalents, with a gain of more than 2,700 new regions, while Wolf Territories Grid was the most active, with 7,737 unique visitors over the past 30 days.

Our stats do not include most of the grids running on DreamGrid, a free easy-to-use version OpenSim, since these tend to be private grids.

OpenSim is a free, open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Discovery Grid leaves OpenSim for new virtual world platform

This big news today is that Discovery Grid is shutting down. The plan is for it to reopen on the O3DE platform, which Amazon created then donated to the open source community.

You can read more about it here.

Hypergrid Business now on BlueSky

And we now have a BlueSky account: @HypergridBusiness.

Here are a few other folks to follow:

You can see everyone HGB is following here.

Leave a note in the comments if you have a BlueSky account and want people to be able to follow you, or if you know of a grid that does.

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.

Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

1. Wolf Territories Grid: 7,737 active users
2. OSgrid: 4,262 active users
3. GBG World: 2,548 active users
4. Alternate Metaverse: 2,357 active users
5. Darkheart’s Playground: 2,192 active users
6. DigiWorldz: 2,140 active users
7. WaterSplash: 1,633 active users
8. Trianon World: 1,142 active users
9. AviWorlds: 1,073 active users
10. Neverworld: 1,065 active users
11. AviVerse AlterEgo: 1,018 active users
12. Sciattisi Grid: 830 active users
13. Party Destination Grid: 826 active users
14. Littlefield: 761 active users
15. Craft World: 717 active users
16. AvatarLife: 656 active users
17. Gentle Fire Grid: 621 active users
18. Eureka World: 615 active users
19. Groovy Verse: 613 active users
20. Herederos Grid: 582 active users
21. ZetaWorlds: 529 active users
22. NakedWorldz: 512 active users
23. Kitely: 511 active users
24. Astralia: 484 active users
25. Kishaki: 455 active users

Online marketplaces for OpenSim content

There are currently 20,998 product listings in Kitely Market containing 41,138 product variations, 35,902 of which are exportable.

Kitely Market has delivered orders to 634 OpenSim grids to date.

As you can see in the above chart, nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area on the graph. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past eight years.

Last month, the numbers went down a little bit.

“Unfortunately a few stores were disabled because their owners passed away a long time ago and we lost the ability to transfer their sales earnings to them,” Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. “In most cases, we don’t do this as people’s next of kin take over their accounts and shut them down themselves, or keep those accounts active and update the PayPal payout address in order to enable us to transfer those stores’ earnings to them.”

This is a reminder to all of us to make provisions for our online accounts, especially those that are generating revenues.

The Kitely Market is the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim. It is accessible to both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. The instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.

New grids

No new grids were added to the database in the past 30 days.

If you know of any public grid that we’re missing, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Suspended grids

The following 10 grids were marked as suspended this month: Alterlifes, Bernicia, Dominator, DowGrid, Goldor Grid, GorGrid, Nova Space, The City, Thrae, and Uzuri Virtual.

If they don’t reappear online again soon, they will be marked as closed in future reports.

Sometimes, a grid changes its login URI or website address — if that’s the case, email me and let me know and I’ll update my database.

Top 40 grids by land area

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

• OSgrid: 35,614 regions
• Wolf Territories Grid: 30,053 regions
• Kitely: 18,156 regions
• ZetaWorlds: 13,029 regions
• Alternate Metaverse: 10,712 regions
• Groovy Verse: 8,783 regions
• Virtual Vista Metaverse: 6,173 regions
• DigiWorldz: 3,485 regions
• CandM World: 2,102 regions
• Discovery Grid: 1,618 regions
• Tag Grid: 1,465 regions
• Friends Grid: 1,168 regions
• ArtDestiny: 1,156 regions
• Shoalwater Bay: 1,104 regions
• GBG World: 961 regions
• Virtual Worlds Grid: 914 regions
• AviWorlds: 826 regions
• Craft World: 730 regions
• Kinky Haven: 685 regions
• AvatarLife: 595 regions
• Littlefield: 515 regions
• Neverworld: 374 regions
• Furry World: 373 regions
• Virtual Worlds Zone: 364 regions
• Darkheart’s Playground: 346 regions
• Nemesis 3D: 305 regions
• EdMondo: 300 regions
• Migrating Coconuts: 247 regions
• Open Virtual Worlds: 229 regions
• MisFitz Grid: 215 regions
• Kater and Friends: 202 regions
• Japan Open Grid: 199 regions
• Counter Earth: 198 regions
• Adreans-World: 167 regions
• Utopia Skye: 156 regions
• XTalent: 145 regions
• GerGrid: 141 regions
• Logicamp: 124 regions
• WestWorld Grid: 121 regions
• Magic Grid: 121 regions

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

Hypergrid Business editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist. During the day, Maria Korolov is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at maria@hypergridbusiness.com. Her first virtual world novella, Krim Times, made the Amazon best-seller list in its category. Her second novella, The Lost King of Krim, is out now. She is also the publisher of MetaStellar, a new online magazine of speculative fiction.

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