A $1.25 Billion Unicorn and a $150 Million Feud: John Linden's Mythical Games
Mythical Games became a blockchain-gaming unicorn on the back of a game still in early access. A year later it was suing its own former executives. How the money flowed, and how Mythical survived by betting on sports.
In November 2021, a studio whose main game was still in early access announced that investors now valued it at $1.25 billion. TechCrunch's headline captured the mood exactly: the studio behind "'early access' crypto game Blankos Block Party banks monster $1.25B valuation from a16z".
The studio was Mythical Games, led by CEO John Linden. Its rise, its legal fight with former executives, and its survival by licensing big sports brands make it one of the more instructive money stories of the blockchain-gaming era.
The unicorn round
Mythical was built by a team of console and mobile veterans who argued that players should own the items they buy in games, and be able to sell them. Its first game, Blankos Block Party, was a colourful party game whose vinyl-toy characters were NFTs.
On 4 November 2021, Mythical announced a $150 million Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz, at a $1.25 billion valuation. That made it a unicorn, and one of the best-funded blockchain studios in the United States, at the very top of the 2021 market.
As a private company, Mythical's founders' stakes are not public, and no personal net worth for Linden has been published by Forbes or Bloomberg.
The $150 million feud
A year later, the money story turned bitter. In December 2022, Mythical sued three former executives, alleging they had used company secrets and relationships to raise $150 million for a new venture of their own while still working at Mythical. The new company became known as Fenix Games. The case became one of the most closely watched legal fights in web3 gaming, a vivid example of how much money was chasing a small pool of experienced people.
Down rounds and sports bets
Mythical cut costs as the market fell, and its next raise was far smaller: in June 2023, it closed a $37 million round backed by a16z and Cathie Wood's ARK Invest. The company's strategy shifted towards licensed sports.
Its American football game NFL Rivals, launched in 2023, became its most successful title, and in 2025 Mythical teamed up with football's world governing body on FIFA Rivals, a mobile game with blockchain-backed player items. Meanwhile Blankos Block Party, the game that won the unicorn valuation, was eventually shut down.
The Rivals games follow a very different recipe from Blankos. They are free mobile games sold through the normal app stores, built on famous licences rather than original characters, and the blockchain sits in the background. It is the opposite of the 2021 pitch, in which owning NFTs was the main attraction, and it is a big part of why Mythical outlasted many of the studios it competed with for investors' money.
Where John Linden is now
Linden remains Mythical's CEO and has become one of the most visible advocates for licensed, mainstream blockchain games, arguing that big brands and app-store distribution, not token speculation, are how web3 games reach normal players.
WGC's take
Mythical shows a version of the money story where the fortune is mostly corporate. Investors paid a unicorn price for an early-access game. That game is gone, but the company used the money and the time it bought to land two of the biggest licences in sport. For Linden and his investors, the 2021 valuation was a peak; the question for 2027 is whether sports licences can turn that peak into a durable business.
Token prices are highly volatile. Nothing in this article is investment advice.