Activision Blizzard president leaves company to lead the Bored Ape Yacht Club - Mashable

Would you commercialized Call of Duty and World of Warcraft for a tube afloat of monkey pictures?

Daniel Alegre, the now-former president and main operating serviceman of Activision Blizzard, conscionable did. Alegre shared connected Friday that helium was leaving Activison Blizzard aft 3 years with the institution astatine the extremity of Q1 adjacent twelvemonth successful bid to "pursue a caller opportunity."

We present cognize that this caller accidental is heading up Yuga Labs, the genitor institution of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs. 

On Monday, Yuga Labs announced that Alegre was joining the institution arsenic its caller CEO, stepping successful for Nicole Muniz. Muniz, who has been involved with the BAYC founders during the archetypal motorboat signifier successful April 2021, volition proceed to enactment with the institution arsenic a spouse and strategical advisor.

BAYC is by acold the biggest and astir palmy of the non-fungible token projects that blew up during past year's cryptocurrency boom. 

NFTs are fundamentally unsocial tokens connected to a portion of integer media, successful this lawsuit an representation of a cartoon ape, successful bid to amusement ownership implicit the piece. BAYC owners are capable to commercialized their NFTs connected the aftermarket, wherever immoderate person sold for millions of dollars. Other BAYC owners, specified arsenic histrion Seth Green, person created their ain intellectual property astir their Bored Ape NFT, thing Yuga Labs allows BAYC NFT holders to do.

So, what would the erstwhile president of a video crippled conglomerate beryllium doing astatine a institution similar Yuga Labs? Well, video games, of course.

Yuga Labs has been gathering their NFT portfolio, acquiring different large NFT projects similar CryptoPunks, successful hopes of gathering a blockchain-based metaverse. The institution launched a "virtual land" NFT task successful May called "Otherside," which was Yuga Labs' archetypal authoritative foray into the metaverse. The institution aims to crook Otherside into a MMORPG that integrates with BAYC and its different NFT projects. 

"Nicole, Greg, and I person been connected the hunt for idiosyncratic with Daniel’s accomplishment acceptable for immoderate time," Yuga Labs co-founder Wylie Aronow said successful a statement. "We are thrilled to person him articulation the squad to assistance with our imaginativeness of a genuinely interoperable metaverse. Daniel has held 1 of the highest level roles astatine 1 of the largest gaming companies successful the world. He brings invaluable acquisition crossed entertainment, e-commerce, and planetary strategical partnerships — each of which are captious aspects of an immersive web3 satellite built by creators and for creators."

And Alegre isn't their archetypal large gaming prosecute either. In September, the institution hired mobile gaming enforcement Spencer Tucker arsenic its Chief Gaming Officer

However, Yuga Labs volition person its enactment chopped retired for it if it wants to participate the gaming industry. 

Blockchain-based Web3 games person struggled to instrumentality off. Online crippled Axie Infinity, for example, was erstwhile a breakout successful the field…until it was hacked and fractional a cardinal dollars were stolen from the ecosystem. Outside the blockchain space, the broader video gaming assemblage has outright rejected NFTs to the constituent wherever different video crippled companies person had to assure fans that it would not integrate NFTs into its games.