YGG Reports 50,000 LOL Land Sign-Ups Ahead of Its Abstract Launch

Yield Guild Games entered spring 2025 with an unusual plan for Web3 gaming: a colorful, browser-based board game built around short play sessions, familiar cartoon characters and rewards for playing. In its first-quarter community update, published on April 25, 2025, the guild said more than 50,000 gamers had pre-registered for LOL Land, its first in-house game.

Historical news event: 2025-04-25. Retrospective report prepared November 2026.

From guild to game publisher

YGG made its name organizing players around other studios' blockchain games. LOL Land marked a shift toward making its own. According to the Q1 update, YGG announced the game at WolvesDAO's WolvesDEN Alpha Night on the sidelines of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2025, where co-founder Gabby Dizon unveiled it.

A YGG newsletter post on April 13 put pre-registrations at over 40,000 and described the game only as "launching soon." Twelve days later the figure had passed 50,000.

Image: Yield Guild Games

A familiar game format with Web3 rewards

The pitch was deliberately less intimidating than a blockchain role-playing game. YGG compared LOL Land to Monopoly: players roll to move around themed boards, and every roll has a chance of winning something. The guild said the design came from its community's preference for casual games that are easy to pick up and reward time spent playing.

The game ran on Abstract, an Ethereum layer-2 network built by Igloo, the parent company of Pudgy Penguins. Licensed Pudgy Penguins characters appeared alongside familiar faces from the YGG community. At launch there were four boards: YGG City, Beach Day, Carnival and Ice World Wonderland, the main Pudgy Penguins zone.

Players could earn YGG tokens and unlock NFTs. After launch, YGG said points and NFTs would qualify players for a share of a $10 million rewards pool paid in YGG tokens. Those rewards weren't the same as wages, and in-game prizes shouldn't be mistaken for a guaranteed return. YGG itself later described its target audience as "casual degens": crypto-native players who might not call themselves gamers but enjoy quick games with token mechanics built in. That's a long way from the early play-to-earn crypto games of a few years before.

Image: Yield Guild Games

The Pudgy Penguins tie-in was central. The brand had already shown that a friendly cartoon character could reach mainstream audiences through toys and social media. Putting those characters into a casual game was a way to make blockchain entertainment feel more like ordinary mobile play, a strategy Pudgy Penguins later pursued directly with Pudgy Party.

Launch and early numbers

LOL Land opened on May 23, 2025. YGG said in a May 30 report that more than 25,000 players joined over the opening weekend, and that pre-registrations had climbed past 118,000 by launch day. Those figures are company-reported.

The launch also marked the debut of YGG Play, the guild's publishing arm for what it called "Casual Degen" games, which went on to sign other studios' titles.

What happened afterward

The business didn't last. On July 6, 2026, YGG announced it was sunsetting YGG Play. LOL Land and another game, Waifu Sweeper, would be retired, with the transition complete by August 1. YGG said it was parting ways with 35 people and redirecting the company toward AI data.

The guild was clear that the problem wasn't the product's early traction. It said YGG Play had passed $9 million in lifetime revenue by the end of the first quarter of 2026, but that the crypto crash that began on October 10, 2025, had cut off the retail spending these games relied on. In the July 2026 announcement, Dizon called the shutdown a market decision rather than a product decision. Two partner games, GIGACHADBAT and Ragnarok Breaker, continued under their own studios.

That later shutdown matters when looking back at the 2025 news, but it doesn't suggest LOL Land was a rug pull. YGG described a strategic retreat from a publishing business it no longer considered sustainable. The chain itself also faced a reckoning: Abstract later announced a December shutdown after its consumer crypto push fell short.

LOL Land's rise and closure capture one challenge of crypto gaming: it's possible to draw attention, build an appealing game and earn real revenue, and still struggle to support the operation when the market turns. In April 2025, the news was strong pre-registration interest in a new model. The launch and the closure complete the story.

Frequently asked questions

What was LOL Land?

LOL Land was a browser-based casual board game published by Yield Guild Games on the Abstract blockchain. Players rolled to move around themed boards, including a Pudgy Penguins zone, and could earn YGG tokens and NFTs.

How many people pre-registered for LOL Land?

YGG said more than 50,000 people had pre-registered as of April 2025. By the May 23, 2025, launch, it said the figure had passed 118,000.

Was LOL Land a Pudgy Penguins game?

Not exactly. It was YGG's own game, but it featured licensed Pudgy Penguins characters and ran on Abstract, the blockchain built by Pudgy Penguins' parent company, Igloo.

Is LOL Land still running?

No. YGG announced on July 6, 2026, that it was sunsetting its YGG Play publishing unit and retiring LOL Land, with the transition complete by August 1, 2026.

Sources

• Yield Guild Games: Q1 2025 Community Update (April 25, 2025)
• Yield Guild Games newsletter: Launching Soon, LOL Land, a YGG game for degens (April 13, 2025)
• Yield Guild Games: LOL Land launches with 25,000 players on opening weekend (May 30, 2025)
• Yield Guild Games: An update on YGG and our next chapter, sunsetting YGG Play (July 6, 2026)
• Decrypt: YGG launches new publishing arm, debuts first game LOL Land (May 2025)

Featured image: Yield Guild Games

Last updated NOV 2, 2026