$725 Million and a Monster Hunter: Kevin Chou, Forte and the Studios It Bought

On 29 May 2025, the servers for Dauntless, a free-to-play monster-hunting game that had been a quiet hit on PC and consoles since 2019, were switched off. Fans blamed "crypto". They had a point: the studio behind it, Phoenix Labs, had been owned since 2023 by Forte, a blockchain-gaming company that four years earlier had raised one of the biggest sums in the history of the sector.

This is a story about that money, and about one of the people behind it: Kevin Chou, a serial games entrepreneur who had already made a fortune before he turned to blockchain.

The entrepreneur: Kabam and Gen.G

Chou co-founded Kabam, the mobile studio best known for Marvel Contest of Champions, which grew into one of the most successful Western mobile publishers of the 2010s before most of it was sold to Korea's Netmarble in 2017.

He then moved into esports. Chou co-founded KSV Esports, which in 2017 bought Samsung Galaxy, that year's League of Legends world champions, and rebranded the team as Gen.G, now one of the biggest names in Korean esports.

By 2019 he had turned to blockchain games, and he co-founded Forte with Josh Williams, who became its CEO.

The $725 million round

Forte's pitch was to be the plumbing, not the game. It built tools that let developers add NFT minting, trading and payments to their games, and it worked across several blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and Cosmos, instead of running its own.

Investors loved it in 2021:

• In spring 2021, Forte raised a $185 million Series A led by Griffin Gaming Partners at a $1 billion valuation.
• On 12 November 2021, it closed a $725 million Series B, co-led by Sea Capital and Kora Management, with Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, Solana Ventures, Polygon Studios, Animoca Brands and Warner Music Group taking part.

That took its total for the year past $900 million. Forte would not disclose its new valuation. At the time it said it had more than 40 developer partners and was live in more than 10 titles.

The quiet acquisitions

What Forte did with that money became clear only later. In 2023, it bought two game studios, Phoenix Labs and Rumble Games. According to a Game Developer investigation, the deals stayed out of public view for about a year, and some staff believed Forte was funding their work before learning it owned their companies. Forte denied demanding secrecy.

Developers reportedly objected to adding blockchain features, including selling digital items, to games that included titles aimed at younger players. Forte later cancelled several games in development. In 2024, it shut Rumble Games and laid off all its staff, and cut more than 100 jobs at Phoenix Labs. In February 2025, Phoenix Labs announced that Dauntless would close for good that May.

Why it matters

Forte is the flip side of the money-makers story. The founders and early investors raised an enormous amount at the top of the market, and the people who paid the price were developers and players of a game that never had anything to do with crypto. Kevin Chou's track record, from Kabam to Gen.G, is one of the strongest in the games business. Forte's $725 million round shows that even experienced founders, flush with 2021 money, can end up owning studios rather than building hits.

Token prices are highly volatile. Nothing in this article is investment advice.