Ex-Fortnite, League of Legends Exec Joins Otherside Creator Yuga Labs

4 months after hiring former Activision President and COO Daniel Alegre as its new CEO, Bored Ape Yacht Membership and Otherside creator Yuga Labs is bringing on extra sport trade leaders to spearhead its unicorn startup. 

Yuga introduced right now that it has employed Mike Seavers, who beforehand labored at League of Legends developer Riot Video games and Fortnite creator Epic Video games, as its new Chief Know-how Officer.

Present Yuga Labs CTO Kerem Atalay will step into an advisory function, in line with an announcement, as soon as Seavers begins on the firm on Might 22.

“There have been uncommon moments over my profession the place I felt like a brand new know-how was creating a real paradigm shift for the world,” Seavers mentioned in an announcement. “I acknowledge that Web3 is a kind of moments, and I’m completely thrilled to affix Yuga Labs to assist usher in a brand new period of the web that impacts the world for the higher.”

Seavers is a longtime sport trade veteran. At Riot, he labored for seven years on the engineering and tech aspect, ending as Chief Know-how Officer whereas supporting hit video games like League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra, and Valorant. He was then the CEO of sport tech startup AppOnboard, which raised $20 million in Sequence C funding for the Buildbox sport engine.

Afterward, he spent slightly below two years at Epic Video games as its EVP of Improvement, the place he oversaw product growth throughout Epic’s platforms and Fortnite’s engineering staff.

“Mike has a confirmed monitor report of taking organizations to the subsequent stage, and he shares our imaginative and prescient for the way essential digital id and neighborhood will probably be for the way forward for the web,” Alegre mentioned in an announcement. “We have now a chance to be the Web3 platform on the forefront of neighborhood and social engagement, by means of media and leisure, and Mike’s experience will assist us scale to attain that.”

Seavers’ new function is one more signal that Yuga Labs is taking its gaming push significantly—and desires its upcoming Otherside metaverse sport to be a smash regardless of flagging enthusiasm over metaverse hype. Otherside comes throughout like a social MMORPG, the place gamers can embark on quests and immerse themselves in a 3D world. 

As Yuga pushes additional into gaming, it’s value noting that its many NFT collections nonetheless make up a hefty proportion of the entire NFT ecosystem by market cap.

In keeping with a latest DappRadar report, Yuga’s NFT ecosystem—which incorporates the Bored Apes, Mutant Apes, CryptoPunks, Meebits, and Otherdeeds, to call just a few—made up almost 35% of all NFT gross sales quantity from October 2022 by means of March 2023.

Yuga Labs’ Otherside sport is essentially the most profitable “metaverse” NFT assortment to this point, with roughly $322 million in whole quantity traded up to now six months alone and almost $1.25 billion value to this point (per CryptoSlam) since final yr’s drop. ApeCoin has additionally develop into the preferred gaming-related cryptocurrency, with a $1.48 billion market cap.