Financial data released by Illuvium shows the big blockchain studio has over a year’s worth of funding remaining to deliver revenue-generating games.
Numbers released by co-founder Kieran Warwick on the Illuvium’s Discord server show a yearly expenditure (“burn rate”) of $12.7m across staff (“core contributors”), contractors and software licensing.
Total cash reserves, including holdings in stablecoins and general cryptocurrencies, amount to $15.4m. A significant minority of the funds – $2.5m, or 17% – is held in volatile tokens such as ETH.
Illuvium, which is set up as a decentralized autonomous organisation (DAO), has missed game launch deadlines by big margins and some community members have questioned expenditures.
Founders push back
Engaging with the game’s community around suggestions Illuvium should begin selling off game tokens to extend the funding runway, both Kieran Warwick and his brother and co-founder Aaron strongly disagreed.
“If founders started dumping their tokens right now, it would create a panic and have a catastrophic cascading effect. The amount of fear, doubt and uncertainty it would cause would be insane,” Kieran Warwick said.
Aaron Warwick said the DAO had no say over what happens to vesting tokens.
“We have committed to not unlocking our tokens until the game has been delivered … I get people being frustrated. But we aren’t evil. We’re here every day working.”
The recent launch of the collectible card system Illuvium Beyond saw an injection of funding into Illuvium’s coffers, with over 100k of the virtual card packs called “D1sks” sold. Exactly how much cash has been raised is not clear given the packs could be purchased using Illuvium’s own token at a discount (as well as with ETH).
Illuvium describes its project as an Interoperable Blockchain Game (IBG), meaning it is developing several different games that share tokens and the game universe.
Illuvium Overworld is a third-person perspective game where the player runs around a graphically impressive world collecting creatures. Illuvium Arena is an auto-battler that uses the collected creatures, and Illuvium Zero is a city-builder that generates resources for the whole ecosystem.
Each of these games is currently in beta testing. The organization’s record of delivering on deadline is not good: for example, Zero was initially announced for launch in late 2021, and is still in testing, with deadlines for beta updates also being missed.
Enjoy our reporting? Sign up for the Pharos newsletter and receive an update every week for free.
Disclosure: Polemos holds Illuvium assets. The holdings have not influenced this reporting. Please see our Editorial Policy.
