Asian Web3 Gaming, September 2026: One Store, One Hack, One Playtest, One Pause
By BCGamer —
Tags: onechain, cross, nexus, one store, wemix, wemade, kingnet, axie infinity, atia's legacy, sky mavis, axs, mir5, mir4, night crows, legend of ymir, rom golden age, stone rush, web3 gaming, blockchain gaming, crypto hack, korea
Snapshot: 23 September 2026. Numbers in brackets point to the sources below.
Two Korean publishers, one Korean platform company and one Vietnamese studio, all betting on blockchain MMOs. Here is where each of them stands.
ONEchain (ex-CROSS): buying distribution
In June, NEXUS bought 89.03% of ONE store for about 62.6 billion won. It then rebranded CROSS to ONEchain, the token to $ONE and the ecosystem currency to ONEUSD. [1] Q2 showed a net profit, but only because of a one-off accounting gain. Operationally, NEXUS lost 5.3 billion won. [1]
Since then:
ONE store Global launched in 122 countries on August 31. It accepts any blockchain and any wallet. [2]
$ONE listed on Kraken. [3]
stONE, a liquid staking token, went live today. [4]
The games:
ROM: Golden Age on CROSS (Red Lab Games) launched in December as the MMORPG flagship. It was built on CROMx, a strictly capped game token, with a seasonal World Ranking paying on-chain rewards based on contribution [13] and a deposit-for-rewards pool fed by in-game revenue. [14] Nine months later, the official site lists an End of Service notice, with shutdown set for October 15. [27] At the time of writing, the site shows CROMx with a market cap of about $249. So much for value preservation.
Seal M on CROSS hit #7 in Thailand and #14 in Taiwan on the app store charts shortly after launch. [15]
Throne of Chaos is a dark-fantasy strategy RPG built on 60-day seasons. Part of its token-issuance fees are burned or recycled into season rewards. [16]
Checkpoint: Jang Hyun-guk says ONE store turns monthly profitable in September and quarterly profitable in Q4. [5]
WEMIX: hacked through a contract nobody used
On July 26, an attacker minted about 5.2 million WEMIX$ through two deprecated contracts. A 2022 upgrade had left their initialize function callable by anyone. [6] Compensation payouts started September 21, and Wemade is buying back 500,000 WEMIX. [7][8] This is the second major hack in about 17 months. The first one got WEMIX delisted by Korea's DAXA exchanges. [9]
Lesson: on-chain, "deprecated" doesn't mean "dead."
The games are still what keeps WEMIX alive:
MIR4, Night Crows and ROM: Golden Age had their blockchain features frozen after the hack. Everything was restored by August 18. [7] ROM ran on both WEMIX and ONEchain, and being on two chains didn't save it: the game shuts down on October 15. [27]
Legend of YMIR was first in line for restoration because of its limited WEMIX$ exposure. [6] It is now celebrating 600 days of service [17] and running a 3v3 ranked arena season through October 15. [18]
Night Crows shipped its "FIRST" update on September 17. It adds the first jump-start server, Genesia, where characters can instantly reach level 50, plus a rebooted two-handed sword class. [19]
The only new blockchain title on the way is Hellsquad Rrrush!: Stone Rush, a casual roguelike tower defense game from LightCON, launching globally in September in 170+ countries with AMBER and PLAY tokens. [30] Wemade's wider pipeline (Night Crows W, Project TAL, Project MO) has not been announced as blockchain titles. [28]
The bigger story: Wemade is changing hands. Founder Park Kwan-ho is selling his entire 39.33% stake for 920 billion won to a consortium led by NeoPulse, and China's Kingnet, the company Wemade fought in court over the Mir IP for a decade, is putting in around 400 billion won. Closing is targeted for October 30. Wemade says its core businesses will continue as planned, but TheElec cites an industry insider saying the consensus is that WEMIX will eventually be separated from Wemade, since China treats crypto businesses as illegal financial activity. [29]
Checkpoints: a public, verifiable audit of every legacy contract, and what happens to WEMIX after the deal closes on October 30.
Axie: Atia's Legacy is being rebuilt in public
The playtest history shows a game still finding its core:
Playtest 1: in Sky Mavis's own survey, over 40% of testers played more than 20 hours, and the excitement score came in above 69. [20] Keep in mind the testers were hand-picked from the community.
Playtest 2: combat was rebuilt around a single Axie, with a basic attack, an ultimate and a dash. It also added a 10-stage dungeon, five weapons and two bosses. [21]
Playtest 3: 8-player free-for-all matches, 5 minutes each, won by the first player to 10 kills. Every Axie had identical stats, Mystics included. Random mushroom power-ups add buffs, and killing a buffed player steals half of them. [10][22]
On what comes next, Sky Mavis says it hears the loud demand for 3v3. [23] Its Lab Log updates carry an explicit disclaimer that they are snapshots of development, not release commitments. [24]
Around the game:
Terrariums, the land feature, earns bAXS through Lunium, an off-chain resource. Free Lunium regenerates slowly (about five days of regen per full day of earning), and paid packs keep land running at full speed. [25] That is a monetization loop worth watching.
Axie Classic is pausing competitive seasons and active development after Season 16. [11]
Coinbase suspended AXS perpetual futures on August 26. [11]
A launch in 2026 is still the target, with no date confirmed. [11]
Checkpoint: a dated launch before the year ends.
Scam warning: hype cycles attract impersonators. Sky Mavis says genuine giveaways are announced only on official Axie channels. [26]
MIR5: paused, then "still in development"
In March, local media reported that Wemade had paused MIR5 development during a group-wide restructuring, with much of the roughly 60-person team facing redeployment or resignation. [12] In its Q2 results in August, Wemade still listed MIR5 among the projects in development, but gave no timeline. [28]
Bottom line
The pattern is clear. Games with a real Web2 player base behind them (Night Crows, YMIR, MIR4) keep shipping content. The platforms and flagship bets carry the risk, and ROM shows that even a game on two chains can die inside a year. Each has one question to answer by year-end:
ONEchain: does ONE store become operationally profitable?
WEMIX: can it make its security verifiable, and does it survive the change of owner?
Axie: does Atia's Legacy ship?
MIR5: does it get a real timeline?
If a thesis fails, it gets marked as failed here.
Sources
Aju Business Daily: ajunews.com
Kyunghyang Games: khgames.co.kr
Daily Hankook: daily.hankooki.com
ZDNet Korea: zdnet.co.kr
Aju Business Daily (interview): ajunews.com
WEMIX official: wemix.com
Daily Hankook: daily.hankooki.com
EBN via Nate: news.nate.com
Nate News: news.nate.com
BlockchainGamerBiz: blockchaingamer.biz
CoinMarketCap: coinmarketcap.com
MTN via Daum: v.daum.net
Nate News (ROM onboarding): news.nate.com
GameVu: gamevu.co.kr
Xports News (Seal M): xportsnews.com
Xports News (Throne of Chaos): xportsnews.com
4th Journal: 4th.kr
Good Morning Economy: goodkyung.com
BetaNews: betanews.net
The Lunacian (Playtest 1 feedback): blog.axieinfinity.com
The Lunacian (Playtest 2): blog.axieinfinity.com
The Lunacian (Playtest 3): blog.axieinfinity.com
The Lunacian (Lab Log #3): blog.axieinfinity.com
The Lunacian (Lab Log #1): blog.axieinfinity.com
The Lunacian (Lab Log #4): blog.axieinfinity.com
Sky Mavis Support: support.axieinfinity.com
ROM: Golden Age official site (End of Service notice): romgoldenage.com
Aju Business Daily (Wemade Q2 2026): ajunews.com
TheElec (Kingnet and Wemade): thelec.kr
Xports News (Stone Rush): xportsnews.com
Do your own research. Not financial advice. Check primary sources yourself.
Researched and drafted with AI (Claude by Anthropic), reviewed by a human. AI makes mistakes, so verify anything that matters against the sources.