“Addicted” is a blockchain game that generated more than ¥500 million(over $3 million) in sales in just 48 hours after launch. In terms of revenue, it ranks as the largest blockchain game released in 2025.
Yet despite that success, the team stopped releasing new updates only a few months later. The studio behind the game, Pandemic Labs, has already moved on to building a new title. Why would a clear hit like Addicted be deliberately time-boxed instead of operated as a long-running live service?
NFT Media spoke with Kohei Nagata, co-founder of Pandemic Labs, to unpack：
- What made Addicted take off so quickly
- Why the service was intentionally short-lived
- How virality and “degens” shaped the entire product design
- What comes next with their new title, Jailed
From Southeast Asia and the U.S. to Web3 Entrepreneurship
co-founder Kohei Nagata
— First, could you walk us through your career so far?
Nagata: I’m currently a co-founder at Pandemic Labs, where we develop and operate blockchain games.
Before that, I spent years as an entrepreneur in Southeast Asia and the United States, trying a lot of different businesses and, honestly, failing a lot along the way.
I decided I wanted to become an entrepreneur when I was still in high school. I dropped out, left Japan, and flew to the Philippines without a concrete plan. After that I spent about eight years building businesses in places like Malaysia and San Francisco.
I wasn’t fixated on any specific industry—I just really enjoyed building services. That naturally led me into software, then from mobile apps into blockchain.
— What first sparked your interest in blockchain?
Nagata: It was the NFT boom. Seeing that level of energy and excitement around the ecosystem made a strong impression on me.
In San Francisco, the first product I built was a voice call app for long-distance couples. The user need was very real, but the total number of long-distance couples is small, so we hit the limits of a niche market. That experience taught me how critical market size and trend really are.
Right around that time, NFTs started exploding. I decided to jump into a space that still had very few real players—DAOs—and went all-in.
Grabbing Attention with a Cannabis-Farming Game
— So what kind of game is “Addicted”?
Nagata: Addicted is essentially a cannabis-farming simulation game.
We chose cannabis as the motif because we needed a theme that was provocative enough to make everyone stop and look. Something that made people go: “What on earth is that?”
Over the past four years we’ve built a number of blockchain apps and seen plenty of successes and failures. Looking across all of those, our conclusion was that marketing matters even more than the product itself.
We wanted a concept that would spark curiosity and controversy. That led us to cannabis cultivation as the core theme.
— What kind of results did Addicted achieve after launch?
Nagata: The numbers were big:
The launch trailer hit 2.3 million views in just one day
Trading volume reached around 7 billion (approx. $45 million) in two days
Players bought around 200,000 packs, for total revenue of over ¥500 million(over $3 million)
That revenue figure is the largest among blockchain games launched in 2025.
How the Addicted Economy Works
— Can you walk us through the Addicted ecosystem? How does the game actually work?
Nagata: Players start by paying 0.5SOL to build their first factory.
Inside Addicted, the in-game currency is a token called $WEED. Players use $WEED to:
Buy card packs
Level up their factories
Card packs contain Weed cards with different rarities. Higher-rarity cards have higher production rates, so they boost your yield.
Most importantly, all tokens spent by players are burned. That design is meant to keep inflation in check and avoid runaway token emissions.
Why They Chose Solana Over Ethereum
— Addicted runs on Solana. Why did you choose Solana as the base chain?
Nagata: Because we had already hit the limits of Ethereum’s scalability.
In October 2024, we launched a project called Infected（@infecteddotfun）, themed around a pandemic, on an Ethereum Layer 2. The game itself was well-received and the user base grew explosively.
But as transactions surged, gas fees skyrocketed and the user experience deteriorated badly. Even at around 50,000 followers, the infrastructure couldn’t keep up. It was clear that we couldn’t scale much further on that stack.
I personally used to prefer Ethereum, but for a game with heavy transaction volume, we needed a chain that could handle it. That’s why we chose Solana for Addicted.
Locking Down Security After Past Attacks
— We heard that Infected suffered cyberattacks. What kind of security measures did you put in place for Addicted?
Nagata: We focused on two big risks:
- DoS attacks (massive traffic causing servers to go down)
- Unauthorized access and database tampering
Because money is directly involved in blockchain games, attackers will probe every possible weakness.
To mitigate DoS attacks, we added more steps to the authentication flow so it’s harder to flood the system with bots. For data, we tried to design things so that as much as possible is private and tamper-resistant, reducing the incentive and impact of database attacks.
We listed out potential threats one by one and tested countermeasures for each. Building the game itself wasn’t the hardest part—security is where we spent a huge amount of time and resources.
The Key to Success: Going All-In on Virality
— What do you see as the main reason behind Addicted’s success?
Nagata: We went all-in on virality marketing—social media and word-of-mouth.
We produced an animated trailer ahead of launch and pushed it heavily on social networks, ultimately gathering 300,000 pre-registrations.
Personally, I was checking social trends every day and tweaking our posts to incorporate elements that could go viral. The big difference this time is that we had already built up a large audience waiting for the launch.
— Who did you design Addicted for? What kind of users were you targeting?
Nagata: Instead of trying to be broadly appealing, we aimed at a very specific group and wanted them to love the product.
In this case, that group was what we call “degens”—high-risk-tolerant, full-time crypto traders who thrive on volatility.
One interesting aspect of Web3 is that a relatively small group like the degens can account for most of the trading volume. We saw this with Infected: some players were putting in the equivalent of billions of yen just to participate.
Degens have incredibly strong preferences and very clear likes and dislikes. So with Addicted, we made design choices to delight that specific group first.
In blockchain games, what draws attention isn’t the game mechanics alone, but the transaction volume. When big players arrive and volume spikes, the project becomes more visible, and that attracts new users.
Our goal was to create a system where degens have a great time and naturally invite others, causing the project to spread.
Why Players Loved the Experience
— How did users respond to Addicted?
Nagata: The response has been very positive overall.
With Infected, we received harsh feedback when the game didn’t work as intended. But with Addicted, we’ve had almost none of that.
One feature players loved is the pack opening experience, similar to Pokémon TCG booster packs. We put a lot of care into the animations to recreate the same “heart-pounding” moment as opening a physical pack.
Many users recorded their reactions as videos and posted them on social media. Seeing that made me realize how important the 'user experience (UX)' is.
If players are just staring at a price chart and clicking buttons, it’s not fun. You need to design moments inside the gameplay itself that are genuinely enjoyable.
Designing Games Like Short-Form Video
— What’s the current status of Addicted?
Nagata: Existing players can still enjoy the game, but we’ve stopped releasing new updates. We’re now focused on building our next title.
From the beginning, we planned for Addicted to end after a few months. We don’t believe we live in an era where a single game title is played for years and years anymore.
I used to play games like Monster Hunter and Dragon Quest endlessly. But younger audiences today move on to the next piece of content very quickly. That’s why we framed Addicted as a kind of “limited-time reality show” that runs for about three months.
We also made it impossible to carry over tokens or digital assets from Addicted into future titles. That’s an unusual design choice in this space.
If you try to uphold the value of a token forever, the team has to keep working constantly to support it—adding new features to an existing project and so on. But it’s extremely hard to surpass the momentum of the initial launch. In many cases, the project simply fades away.
We felt that such projects aren’t truly “permanent” either. So we decided to be upfront and say:
“We will only develop this project for a fixed period. Enjoy it within that window.”
Tokens as Entertainment, Not Eternal Assets
— Don’t token holders get upset if a project is designed to be temporary from the start?
Nagata: Of course, there will always be people who profit and people who lose money, and we do get complaints.
But even if you pledge to “support this project forever,” that doesn’t magically solve everything. If you force a single project to keep going indefinitely, the token price tends to gradually decline anyway—and some projects simply fade out.
From my perspective, tokens themselves are a form of entertainment.
Just like short-form videos, you enjoy one token or one project for a limited time, then move on to the next. I believe that this short-term entertainment model will become mainstream.
What’s Next: “Jailed” and the Future of Japanese Web3 Games
— What are you working on now?
Nagata: Our next game is called Jailed (@Jaileddotfun), which we’re currently developing.
Addicted became one of the biggest Web3 game hits of 2025, but it also revealed a lot of things we could have done better. If we apply those lessons, I believe we can build a title that’s ten times bigger.
All three core members of the Addicted team are Japanese. That means one of 2025’s largest Web3 games was built by a Japanese team.
Entertainment is Japan's superpower. I’m convinced Japanese companies can compete—and win—globally in Web3 as well. I’d love to see more Japanese teams step into this space.
- Kohei Nagata (X)：@weretuna
- Pandemic Labs (Official X)：@pndmdotorg
- Addicted (Official X)：@addicteddotfun
- Jailed (Official X)：@Jaileddotfun
The post Inside “Addicted,” 2025’s Biggest Blockchain Game Hit. An Interview with Pandemic Labs Co-Founder Kohei Nagata first appeared on NFT Media.
参照元：NFT Media
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