‘Blockchain-powered’ recreation storefront reportedly shutting down and taking prospects’ video games with it

The elevator pitch behind Robot Cache is straightforward: what if there was a digital storefront like Steam, however you could possibly promote video games to different customers when you had completed taking part in them? Oh, and it was all powered by the blockchain. Sorry to spoil the ending, however it did not find yourself making a lot of a splash because it launched in 2018—and now a Reddit thread from user kallreven alleges that it is gone for good.

“Thank you sincerely for joining us on this journey,” reads the screenshot of an electronic mail purportedly from the Robot Cache Team. “While we gave it everything we had, we weren’t able to attract the user base and sales traction needed to keep the store running. As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down the Robot Cache store.

“The retailer will formally shut in 30 days. After that time, the platform will not be accessible, and customers will not be capable to play video games bought by Robot Cache, even when they’ve downloaded a full copy.” It’s the nightmare scenario of games with DRM. The email continues that the team can’t let people keep their games because the site’s “verification system” will go offline. Any “iron,” the site’s digital currency, will similarly be rendered kaput.

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We have reached out to Robot Cache for remark since nothing on the location or Robot Cache’s social media channels essentially corroborate this screenshot, however one other person claiming to be a Robot Cache buyer in the identical thread, shadowds, claims to have acquired the identical electronic mail. It seems that the storefront has been working below radio silence for some time. The web site’s X account hasn’t made an unique publish since 2023, and its Discord server solely has one remaining moderator.

“I think none of the original team is still on the company,” That moderator, eazykiller, posted on the Robot Cache Discord final May. “Shortly after launch, most of them quit and not even we mods got any communication from the company side since years.”

According to a 2018 report from GamesIndustry.biz, the storefront initially sought to safe $15 million by way of a token era occasion, reportedly falling $5 million short. inXile head Brian Fargo based the platform and spoke highly of it previous to launch, and Robot Cache even snagged an AMD partnership, however the mission did not have legs. We have reached out to Fargo for remark, and can replace this story when if hear again.

A 2025 report to investors out there on Robot Cache’s web site states the storefront solely generated $532 in revenues from recreation software program gross sales in 2024. The similar report shares that as of December that 12 months, the corporate had an collected deficit of over 30 million {dollars}.