Earn Crypto Gaming: How Play-to-Earn Projects Really Work in 2025
When you hear earn crypto gaming, games that reward players with cryptocurrency or NFTs for playing. Also known as play-to-earn, it means you’re not just spending time—you’re building digital assets. But most of these games don’t pay like they promise. Some started with big airdrops, then vanished. Others still pay, but only if you know where to look and what to avoid.
Behind every play-to-earn, a model where in-game actions earn tokens or NFTs with real value is a token economy. That token needs buyers, trading volume, and a reason to hold it. If the game’s fun but the token has no use outside the game, it’s just digital Monopoly money. Look at Ancient Kingdom (DOM), a blockchain game project that promised airdrops but never launched its game. Its tokens are now worth nothing. Same with SWAPP Protocol, a project that claimed an airdrop but never delivered. These aren’t rare cases—they’re the norm. Real NFT gaming, games where ownership of in-game items is recorded on a blockchain requires more than hype. It needs active players, a working product, and a token that’s listed on real exchanges.
Some games still work in 2025. Age of Tanks, a play-to-earn game with a limited NFT airdrop on CoinMarketCap gave away real NFT tanks with no lottery. That’s rare. Others like Plant vs Undead, a mobile blockchain game with PVU tokens still have active players, but their airdrops are often fake. You’ll find dozens of sites claiming free PVU tokens—most are scams. The key is to check if the project has updates, real team info, and trading volume. If it’s been quiet since 2022, it’s dead. If it’s still pushing new features and has users talking, it might be worth your time.
What you’ll find below isn’t a list of get-rich-quick games. It’s a cleanup of the noise. We’ve pulled apart the dead projects, exposed the scams, and highlighted what’s still active. You’ll see which airdrops are real, which tokens are worth claiming, and which games actually pay out. No fluff. Just what’s working in 2025—and what you should walk away from.