DormantBlockchain gaming (arena RPG)Ethereum, later Polygon2021–2025

Champions Ascension

It sold 7,622 founder NFTs, then paused to chase user acquisition

A gladiatorial arena role-playing game set in the fantasy world of Massina, begun inside the mobile studio Jam City and continued by Rough House Games.

Capital raised (announced): Recorded announced backing; this is separate from cash received, customer deposits and money recovered.
Founder NFTs minted, of 10,000 offered: The project named its own holders after the number, calling them the Glorious 7622 in several posts in the week after minting closed, against the ten thousand it had offered. So roughly a quarter of the founder collection went unsold.
Alpha launch to servers off: Estimated
Alpha release (2024-01-18) to server pause (2025-03-14); dated endpoints, rather than project lifespan.

Funding

Round	Date	Announced	Investors
Plai Labs seed round	2023		Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)Lead

Announced is what was said at the time. Cash actually received is rarely disclosed and is not assumed to match.

People

Name	Period	Now	Last checked
Chris DeWolfe	—	Co-leads REACH Labs with Jeremy Horn; leads Rough House Games	Sep 2026
Aber Whitcomb	—	Not established	Sep 2026
Josh Yguado	—	Not established	Sep 2026
Jeremy Horn	—	Not established	Sep 2026

Promises vs reality

Promised

Outcome

Commitment

No source found here establishes that the MASSINA token ever launched. The in-game economy that arrived with the alpha in January 2024 ran on crystals and essence rather than a traded token, and the rewards mentioned when the servers stopped were in-game rewards, not the token described in 2022.

Recorded as unverifiable rather than not delivered: absence of coverage is not proof that nothing shipped, and no source was found that settles it either way.

Target · target Jun 2022

Land was on the roadmap for mid-2022. By the alpha in January 2024 the game had gone the other way, dropping its open world entirely for a series of menus and static screens, and the servers stopped fourteen months after that.

Commitment

Early access was delivered: buyers of the founder NFTs were given a beta version of the game in September 2022, seven months after the sale. Whether holders ever exercised the voting rights over the game and its story is still not established by any source found here.

Target

A playable game did ship, but not straight away and not on the terms first described. In January 2023 an NFT was still required to play at all. By the alpha a year later the game was free to play with no wallet and no NFT needed, listed on Steam and available through the Epic Games launcher. It never left alpha, and no mobile release was found.

What shipped

· Feb 2022
· Mar 2022
· Sep 2022
· Jan 2024

A missed promise is a missed promise. It is not evidence of fraud, and this page does not treat it as any.

Timeline

December 2021
Champions Ascension was announced in December 2021 as the first blockchain entertainment experience from Jam City, a mobile studio whose games had passed 1.3 billion lifetime installs. The project's own account was created on 30 November 2021.
25 February 2022
Ten thousand were offered across a whitelist day and a public descending-price auction. Chris DeWolfe called it one of the most meaningful projects he had been involved with.
2 March 2022
The project began calling its holders the Glorious 7622, the number that had actually been minted. Roughly a quarter of the collection was never sold.
Holding your Prime Eternal is KEY to success in Champions: Ascension. The Glorious 7622 reap benefits no other Champion can claim to. Prime Eternals are all unique: from Gatekeeper to Grondal, House of Life to Death, and any degree of divinity. In Massina, #PrimeIsPrime.
2 March 2022
Looking for a Prime Eternal? Minting is over, but you can grab one on the marketplaces. Check us out on OpenSea and browse the collection.
13 January 2023
Chris DeWolfe and Aber Whitcomb resigned from Jam City and set up Plai Labs, taking Champions Ascension with them. Jam City moved Josh Yguado into the chief executive role; both sides called the parting amicable. The studio later operated as Rough House Games.
23 January 2023
At the time of the raise the game was open only to people who owned one, with a stated plan to let others in later. A team of fifty was building it. By the alpha a year after that, it was free to play with no wallet required.
18 January 2024
Two years after the NFT sale. The build gained an economy and a progression system, and lost the open world that had carried the promise of land and of players meeting each other in it.
22 January 2025
A thank-you to community members for placing in a partner event. Nothing followed it, and the pause seven weeks later was never announced there.
Huge congrats to the CA community who participated in the ROAD TO VALHALLA! We made to the top 10 partnered communities. Shout out to some of our top members.
14 March 2025
The main servers stopped along with the side modes, so the team could put everything behind REACH Labs. The team said this did not mean the game was abandoned, and that its future would be addressed once REACH Labs had launched.

How it ended

Pivoted away

The servers were switched off in March 2025 so the team could put all its resources behind REACH Labs, a games distribution venture it had started with the studio behind Overworld. The team said the game was paused rather than abandoned and might return once REACH Labs launched. Eighteen months later nothing further had been announced, the official account had gone quiet and the game's own domain no longer resolved.

Corrections

Oct 2026
The minted supply is no longer presented as holdings at shutdown.
The earlier community figure reused the founder NFT mint count. That number does not establish remaining holdings or distinct holders when servers stopped; those remain unknown.

Still alive

Open spot