Atari moving forward with Decentraland's Vegas City metaverse casino; new NFT project joins the trend

Atari, a pioneer developer of home video and arcade games, is reportedly moving forward with plans to build a cryptocurrency casino in one of the largest districts within Decentraland metaverse, called Vegas City. The move is in line with an increasing trend in the gaming industry, which also sees a new NFT project called Sand Vegas Casino Club (SVCC) creating multiple virtual casinos.

According to PSFK iQ Report released this month, titled Brand Strategies For The Metaverse, Atari plans to build and open a virtual casino in Vegas City featuring Atari-themed games as part of an initial two-year loan term inside the virtual land and metaverse platform. This partnership was announced in March 2021, and saw a virtual launch party in late April last year.

The project bets from Atari-themed Casino are expected to reach USD 400 million over 2 years, with 88% of the gains going to the Decentral Games’ treasury bringing value to the $DG holders, Decentral Games said last year.

Inside the planned Atari casino, operating on the Ethereum blockchain via Decentraland (MANA), players will be able to explore and search for the gaming company’s exclusive wearables located throughout the casino. The casino is said to feature many of the video games Atari has designed over the course of their 50-year history as the developers want to explore how "social and monetary metaphysical opportunities" can be brought to life in the metaverse, according to the report.

As for Sand Vegas Casino Club, the NFT project aims to create multiple virtual casinos and share profits to all holders of these 11,111 NFTs. The casinos will be launched in the Web 2.0 and 3.0 spaces and include a new variation of NFT called the Golden Gambler that boosts profits even more, App Developer Magazine reports.

The development team is giving weekly updates on the casino construction. The two main metaverse components to this project are Decentraland and Sandbox, and they have recently announced that they will also be entering into the Infinity Void metaverse when it launches.

These two projects are joining a growing trend that sees gambling operators investing in metaverse offerings over the past few months. In January, Entain became one of the first major operators to announce the development and showcase of disruptive technologies and first consumer products for the sports and entertainment metaverse via a global innovation hub, Ennovate, with the first lab to open in London this spring. 

In February, Kings Entertainment Group, the parent company of global online gaming brands LottoKings and WinTrillions, announced its intent, plans and already taken first steps to research and develop strategies to prepare for the metaverse. Kings Entertainment has secured a soon-to-be-announced URL and is actively exploring purchase options in the virtual Vegas City area of Decentraland.