Online games have always had a special place in the hearts of gamers. Whether they were action games or adventure games, gamers always enjoyed playing games, no matter the age group. However, traditional games were limited in major areas, affecting gamers’ experiences.
These areas were limited storylines, average graphics, lack of online collaborations, and most importantly, getting no real-world value. By this, we mean that what is the use of those 20k gold coins that the gamers earned after completing all the levels, after all, they cannot spend them in the real world.
But now, they can! Yes, we are talking about ‘Play-to-Earn Games’, where gamers can earn collectibles, or assets, that possess real-world value and they can spend them in the real world.
Moreover, these P2E games overcome all the major challenges of traditional games. Want to know how these games are built? In this blog, Developer Bazaar Technologies has provided a step-by-step guide to building a P2E game from scratch, top features that engage gamers and give you a competitive advantage, and the breakdown of their development costs.
What are Play-to-Earn Games?
Play-to-earn games, also known as P2E games, are blockchain-based games in which users get a chance to earn collectibles that possess value, such as NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
These assets can be sold or traded in the games or can be used to make real-world transactions, making these games more rewarding. P2E games are based on blockchain and offer transparency, ownership, and security for players’ assets.
In the last few years, play-to-earn games have gained immense popularity, as these not just offer entertainment but also financial incentives that redefine the gaming landscape.
Why Invest in P2E Game App Development?
But how P2E game app development is a proven business idea? Let’s explore some statistics to understand this better.
- The global Play-to-Earn NFT Games market size was worth $ 1.35 billion in 2024 and is expected to be worth $6.32 billion by 2032, to be growing at a CAGR of 21.3%, during the forecast period.
- In 2021, Axie Infinity, a popular P2E game, clocked in $3.5 billion in NFT transactions.
- In the first half of January 2024, about 1.73 million gamers were playing Web3 games.
- The Gala Games, an Ethereum-based P2E game, has the highest market cap of $881,258,551 among the top play-to-earn games in 2024.
- BANANA, a Toncoin (TON)-based play-to-earn game, gained over eight million members within four weeks of its launch.
All these numbers and statistics clearly show that the craze for P2E games is at an all-time high. Instead of traditional games, people love play-to-earn games and making revenue out of them.
As an entrepreneur, there are several benefits of investing in P2E game development, such as:
1. Revenue Streams
The top benefit of developing a custom P2E game is that with the game, you can build several revenue streams for your business. You can earn income through in-game purchases, transactions of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) on the marketplaces, and commissions.
2. Enhanced User Engagement
As you already know the immense popularity of blockchain-based play-to-earn games, you can develop a custom P2E game and attract gamers and crypto enthusiasts from different parts of the world and enhance your game’s user base.
3. Attracting Investments
When you build a P2E game that gains a lot of users in a very short time, your game grabs the attention of potential investors who look for opportunities to invest and earn ROIs. So, by developing an engaging P2E game, you can gain interest from blockchain investors and venture capitalists who would be convinced to invest in your P2E game.
4. Data-Driven Insights
Data is a very crucial component when it comes to digitizing and bringing revolution to the gaming industry. By developing a custom play-to-earn game, you can gather users’ data, with their consent, and use it to refine gameplay and monetization strategies based on player feedback and find patterns and trends for targeted marketing.
5. Competitive Advantage
Lastly, with play-to-earn game development, you can tap into the growing blockchain technology gaming market and be ahead of traditional gaming competitors. Moreover, you can also offer distinct values, such as engaging storylines, high-end graphics, and tangible rewards, that will differentiate you from others and help you gain a competitive advantage.
How to Develop a Custom Blockchain-Based Play-to-Earn Game From Scratch
The following is the step-by-step process for custom P2E game development based on the blockchain network.
1. Conceptualization and Ideation
The first step of developing a custom play-to-earn game based on a blockchain network is to conceptualize its genre, storyline, characters, collectibles, how it will be different from web3-based P2E games, and what value it will provide to the gamers.
You need to think of these details to build an engaging P2E game that will attract users and mark your position in the industry.
2. Market Research and Feasibility Study
After you come up with a groundbreaking P2E game idea, it’s time to study the market and your competitors. If you are aiming to build an action-based P2E game, for instance, analyze the market to get insights into what players love the most about action P2E games and what they hate the most.
Also, go through the feedback of different action-based play-to-earn games to learn about minor details that might be helpful in your P2E game development.
Additionally, study other competitive action-based P2E games and their technicalities to learn more about P2E game development, and what you can add more to your game that can make it better than the others.
3. Blockchain Selection
P2E games are built on blockchain networks. Hence, you also need to choose the right blockchain network to support your play-to-earn game. There are some factors that you need to consider while picking the blockchain network, such as gas fees, transaction speed, smart contract compatibility, interoperability, and others.
Here are some popular blockchain networks that top blockchain developers leverage to build top P2E games
- Ethereum
- Binance Smart Chain (BSC)
- Solana
- Polygon (Matic)
- Avalanche
- Immutable X
- Flow
- WAX (Worldwide Asset eXchange)
- Cardano
- Algorand
You can pick either of these networks or choose any other, based on your P2E game development requirements.
4. Tokenomics Design
Tokenomics is an economic system with rules and regulations that decide the creation, distribution, and utilization of tokens and cryptocurrencies within the blockchain ecosystem.
In reference to P2E game development, tokenomics will be used to determine how many tokens, or collectibles will be there in the game, what will be their use, how much value each asset will hold, and how gamers can earn them.
You need to create tokenomics for your P2E game to ensure the in-game economy that includes reward mechanisms, staking options, and token allocation.
5. Game Design and Storyboarding
Now, it’s time to design the game. You should employ game developers to design the game narrative, its characters, in-game assets, dialogues, and other components. Moreover, create wireframes and 3D prototypes to visualize how the game looks and how it will flow further.
6. Smart Contract Development
After designing the P2E game, you need to develop the smart contracts. If you do not know about these, then, smart contracts are self-executing programs on a blockchain that automate transactions and processes in the play-to-earn games.
Blockchain developers create smart contracts by writing codes that manage tasks like distributing rewards, enabling NFT trading, and verifying players’ achievements securely and transparently.
As blockchain-based games do not have centralized authorities to monitor all these processes, smart contracts are must-have components in the P2E game development to ensure fairness and trust in the game’s economy.
7. Game Development
After developing smart contracts, the next step is to build the game. You need to hire blockchain game developers who have years of experience and expertise in developing custom P2E games of the genre you are building.
Employ the developers to code the frontend and backend infrastructure of your P2E game.
Also, ensure to leverage the high-end blockchain-powered P2E game development technology stack and game engines to build your play-to-earn game.
8. Third-Party API Integrations
While developing the play-to-earn game, you must integrate third-party APIs (application programming interfaces) into your game to enhance its functionalities and gamers’ experiences.
You can add APIs for integrating wallets into your P2E game. Moreover, you can also choose to integrate payment gateways using which gamers can spend fiat currencies to buy in-game collectibles, analytics that helps them understand their and other gamers’ performances, and more.
9. Testing and Quality Assurance
Once the P2E game is developed, test it to check whether it has any bugs or glitches that may interrupt the gamers’ experiences. Moreover, check the execution of the smart contracts and the tokenomics that you have created for your custom play-to-earn game.
While testing your game, verify its performance on different platforms and ensure that it is delivering consistent gaming experiences across different devices, such as tablets, phones, and desktops.
10. Deploy the P2E Game
Post-testing, deploy your play-to-earn (P2E) game on the chosen blockchain network and the app stores. Also, if you want to list your in-game NFTs on marketplaces, then follow the guidelines and list them on leading marketplaces from where users can trade them.
11. Post-Launch Maintenance and Updates
After the deployment of your P2E game, check its performance by keeping an eye on the metrics, such as the time users are spending on the game, feedback, the amount they are spending while playing the game, and more.
Based on this feedback and metrics, update your P2E game with additional features, advanced versions, etc., to fulfill your users’ expectations and keep the P2E game relevant.
Hence, by following these steps, you can build your custom play-to-earn game tailored to your specific requirements.
Top Features of Play-to-Earn (P2E) Game Application
The top features of the custom P2E game are as follows:
1. Blockchain Integration
The play-to-earn games are built on blockchain networks, such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, and others, that ensure transparency, and security, and allow gamers to own digital assets like NFTs and tokens without any hassle.
2. In-Game Economy
Another cutting-edge feature of P2E game apps is the in-game economy which is a robust rewarding system. This system allows players to earn cryptocurrencies, NFTs, or other collectibles by achieving milestones in the play-to-earn games.
3. NFT Support
In play-to-earn games, players can trade game assets in the form of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
4. Decentralized Ownership
P2E games offer decentralized ownership to gamers, meaning they have full control and ownership of the assets and game rewards that they earn while playing the P2E games.
5. Marketplace Integration
Many P2E games have in-built marketplaces where users can trade NFTs, assets, collectibles, and other in-game items with other players and users.
6. Smart Contract Automation
Smart contracts are integrated into play-to-earn games to automate transactions like distributing rewards, as there are no centralized authorities to perform these actions. Smart contracts ensure transparency and eliminate manual errors in P2E gaming environments.
7. Social Features
Other top features of P2E game apps are social features that enable collaborations, competition, and community building through multiplayer modes and leaderboards.
8. Token Staking
Many play-to-earn games have the token staking feature that allows players to stake their tokens while playing games. If they win, they get additional benefits or rewards.
Technology Stack to Build a Custom Play-To-Earn Game App
The following is a technology stack that you can use to develop a P2E game app tailored to your specific needs.
| Category | Technology Stack |
|---|---|
| Blockchain Platform | Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Solana |
| Smart Contracts | Solidity (Ethereum), Rust (Solana) |
| Frontend Development | Unity, Unreal Engine, React Native |
| Backend Development | Node.js, Python, Go |
| Database | MongoDB, Firebase, MySQL |
| Cloud Infrastructure | AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure |
| Payment Integration | Stripe, PayPal, Crypto Wallets (MetaMask) |
| NFT Integration | OpenSea SDK, Rarible SDK |
| Web3 Integration | Web3.js, ethers.js, Alchemy |
| Analytics & Monitoring | Google Analytics, Firebase Analytics |
| Testing | Jest, Mocha, Truffle |
| Security | OpenZeppelin, Forta, Chainlink VRF |
| Version Control | Git, GitHub, GitLab |
Cost of Developing a Play-to-Earn (P2E) Game
The estimated cost of developing a play-to-earn game app ranges from $40,000 to over $60,000 for a basic game. The advanced P2E game development costs range between $60,000 to over $100,000. Whereas, for complex P2E game development, the costs can go as high as approximately $100,000 to over $300,000, or even more.
Note that the costs given above are estimations because it is hard to tell you the exact amount to build a custom P2E game, as the costs depend on various factors, such as:
- Game Complexity
- Type of Blockchain
- Features and Functionalities
- Platform
- Game Graphics and Audio
- Project Timeline
- Testing and Maintenance
- Project Management
- Development Team and More
All these factors combine together to determine the final costs of developing a P2E game app. If you want to know the cost bracket for your P2E game development, contact our team and share your requirements.
Conclusion
So, this was our complete guide on play-to-earn (P2E) game development. In this blog, we provided insights our the P2E market and the scope of growth with the latest statistics. We explained to you how developing a P2E game in 2025 can benefit you and your business and put you in front of the web3 gaming industry.
Also, to guide you on development, we provided a step-by-step process to build a custom P2E game from scratch. We have also explained the features of P2E games and the technology stack using which you can build your play-to-earn game.
At last, we provided you with the estimated costs of developing a custom play-to-earn game app. If you are eager to start your P2E game journey today and looking for a mobile application development company, look no further!
Get in touch with Developer Bazaar Technologies and let’s build a blockchain-based P2E game that can disrupt the whole gaming industry.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Are P2E games legal?
Yes, most play-to-earn (P2E) games are legal if they do not fall under or are associated with the gambling industry.
Q. What are some top P2E game ideas in 2025?
The top P2E game ideas in 2025 are as follows:
- Virtual Real Estate Investment Game
- NFT-based Battle Royale
- Play-to-Earn Sports Simulation Game
- Fantasy Adventure RPG with Playable NFTs
- Decentralized Music Creation Platform
- Eco-Friendly Farming Game
- Blockchain-based Virtual Card Game
- Play-to-Earn Puzzle Game
- Metaverse Exploration and Crafting Game
- Historical Strategy Game with NFTs
Q. What are some popular P2E games?
- Axie Infinity
- Splinterlands
- Decentraland
- Galaxy Fight Club
- Battle of Guardians
