The Web3 gaming company Faraway has purchased the intellectual property rights to two of Yuga Labs’ titles.
In keeping with a previously disclosed attempt to refocus the company, Yuga Labs, the company behind NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), has sold the intellectual property (IP) for two of its games, HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara.
In an attempt to maintain consistency across the games at the new company, Yuga Labs stated in a post on April 17 to X that Web3 gaming studio Faraway had purchased the IP and that Spencer Tucker, the company’s chief gaming officer, would be joining Faraway as the new chief product officer.
In the nonfungible token (NFT)-focused “mech” game HV-MTL, users level up and manage both their local settings and NFTs. On April 30, 2022, the Otherside metaverse was introduced, and Legends of the Mara is an adventure game that plays a role in it.
Faraway and Yuga Labs have collaborated together for a while; Faraway previously created the game Serum City, which had a Mutant Ape Yacht Club theme.
The decision by Yuga to give Faraway access to its game IP is part of a larger effort to “unshackle” the group. It was first mentioned in February of this year, when co-founder Greg Solano returned to Yuga and took Daniel Allegre’s place as CEO.
“We aim to release as many constraints as we can on the BAYC team at Yuga so they can carry out its mission. Greg Solano announced his return to the company on February 22 in a post to X titled “More focus, more agility.”
The announcement on Wednesday coincides with a wider market decline in NFTs, with its flagship BAYC collection being among the most severely impacted among the top NFT collections.
The BAYC collection has a floor price of 11.7 Ether, or $35,400 at current prices, as of the time of writing. Since May 1, 2022, when it reached its highest point of 153.7 ETH, the floor price has dropped by an astounding 92%.
When Yuga Labs revealed earlier this year that it would be acquiring the contentious Moonbirds collection and appointing the project’s inventor, Kevin Rose, as an adviser, it infuriated holders and the NFT community.
