Unioverse
A 50-person studio led by a GTA veteran, offline within three years of its seed
A sci-fi game franchise from the Boulder studio Random Games, whose characters, models and music were to be released royalty-free for anyone to build on, with NFT avatars as the key to its games.
- Recorded studio backing
Recorded announced studio backing; allocation to this game and cash actually received were not disclosed.
Funding
| Round | Date | Announced | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed round | 2022 |
Announced is what was said at the time. Cash actually received is rarely disclosed and is not assumed to match.
People
| Name | Role | Period | Now | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tony Harman | — | Not established | Oct 2026 | |
| Wyeth Ridgway | Unknown – Jul 2025 | Not established | Oct 2026 | |
| Paul Walborsky | — | Unknown | — | |
| David Jones | Sep 2022 – end | Unknown | — |
Promises vs reality
Commitment
The platform shipped a development kit of 3D models, characters, animations and music that anyone could use and profit from, according to coverage of the shutdown.
How many outside creators used it is not established. The founder cited AI-generated assets as having undercut the pitch.
Target
The shutdown coverage describes a free-to-enter racing alpha tournament in July 2024 but no battle royale. Whether one shipped is not established by any source found here.
A missed promise is a missed promise. It is not evidence of fraud, and this page does not treat it as any.
Timeline
20 September 2022
Random Games described a 50-person studio. Players would reach games through NFT character avatars, with avatar sales intended to fund third-party games.
17 May 2023
A leaderboard mini-game of racing through a game environment and destroying bots, released alongside a comic, short fiction and the first playable character as NFTs on Polygon.
2024
In 2024 the project introduced the Unio Coin with a 4 billion supply (April), ran the Hoverdrome racing alpha tournament (July), minted Genesis Starfighter ships (October) and released 5,000 Ventus avatar NFTs (November), according to coverage written at the shutdown.
10 July 2025
Announced by co-founder Wyeth Ridgway on Discord after six months of failed attempts to secure funding and partners, then repeated on X.
How it ended
Ran out of money
In July 2025 co-founder Wyeth Ridgway told the community on Discord that after six months of trying to secure new funding and partners the team could no longer keep the game alive, and later wrote on X that Random Games was closing. The shutdown was immediate and the platform went offline. He said key contributors were stepping in to try to preserve the project.
What happened next
- Community takeover10 July 2025
Ridgway wrote that key contributors were stepping in to try to preserve it. What that produced, if anything, is not established by any source found here.
Still alive
Open spot
Unioverse is gone. Is your game still running?
Spotlight your project here.
Sources
8 sources behind this page.
- 1Random Games Hopes Royalty-Free 'Unioverse' Will Spawn New Games · Built In Colorado · Sep 2022
- 2Enter the 'Unioverse': The Cinematic Sci-Fi Game Takes Shape on Polygon · Decrypt · May 2023
- 3This Week in Crypto Games: 'Off the Grid' Token Hits Solana, More Games Shut Down · Decrypt · Jul 2025
- 4Unioverse Is Officially Shutting Down · GAMES.GG
- 5Random Games Raises $7.6M to Accelerate the Development of Unioverse Franchise · NFTgators · Sep 2022
- 6Random Games Secures $7.6 Million to Launch the Unioverse Franchise · PlayToEarn · Sep 2022
- 7Latest posts of @tonyharman · twitterapi.io (X API), retrieved 3 October 2026
- 8X account search for "Tony Harman" · twitterapi.io (X API), retrieved 3 October 2026
Every figure above is clickable and opens the sources behind it. Copies were stored when each source was read, so a citation still resolves after the page it came from is gone.