Illuvium Team Cuts Wages To Extend Runway

Illuvium's team has agreed to reduce its wages again to preserve the studio's runway, which co-founder Kieran Warwick now puts at more than 12 months, he said Friday.

The cut buys Illuvium past August 2027 on Warwick's own numbers, at a point when crypto gaming studios are closing. Proof of Play announced on Aug. 5 that it was ceasing operations and open-sourcing Pirate Nation's code and art under CC0. The games Illuvium has already shipped cover a fraction of its payroll: the protocol generated $9,781 in fees and revenue over the past 30 days, according to DefiLlama, which puts the trailing-year annualized rate at $123,194.

DefiLlama values Illuvium's treasury at $2.78 million against $60 million raised, and the ILV staked in its pools at $2.21 million, or 7.98% of market capitalization. ILV trades at $3.35, up 6.1% on the day and 17.9% over the week, per CoinGecko, for a market cap of $27.74 million. The token hit an all-time low of $2.69 on July 29 and sits 99.8% below its November 2021 high of $1,911.26.

The wider crypto market rose 18.6% over the same seven days. Warwick closed his post by saying his confidence had "nothing to do with the price of $ETH."

Wages Cut Even Further

Warwick said the studio has "heavily reduced costs" over six months and that the team "agreed to reduce their wages even further to preserve runway." He did not give the size of the cut, the number of staff remaining, or the studio's cash position.

The February update in which Warwick set out the current plan put runway "into mid next year," meaning mid-2027. Friday's wording — "over 12 months of runway again" — indicates the figure had fallen below a year in the six months since.

The Team We Have Left

"The team we have left is almost entirely focused on the MMO, and most of them have been with us for more than three years," Warwick wrote, referring to Overworld.

February's post targeted a December 2026 release for Overworld, with multiplayer combat, dungeon runs, creature capture and onchain items, and no player-versus-player mode at launch. Warwick gave no date on Friday, saying he was running his "final play session of the latest Overworld build" before publishing feedback.

Four other products are launching this year, he said: a Celebrations collection for Illuvium Beyond, Beyond Chaos, Primal Tactica and Loadout. That schedule has slipped from February, when Warwick said Beyond's Wave 5 would complete the collectible card game's first set, to be followed by a three-year celebration set and then Set 2. Wave 5 shipped with a Lamborghini exclusive collection that ran from April 21 to May 5. Warwick now says the Celebrations collection "will be the final release in the Set 1 collection." He gave no detail on Beyond Chaos.

Beyond, launched in March 2023, is Illuvium's "number one revenue-generating game by a long shot," Warwick wrote in February.

Steam Debut In October

Primal Tactica is the product of the licensing deal Warwick described in February, when Arena's head designer asked to take the IP and ship a game with the web3 elements stripped out on Steam, with Illuvium keeping most of the revenue after platform fees. Warwick said Friday the build is nearly complete, will debut at Steam Next Fest in October, and that "Illuvium receives the lion's share of the revenue." He offered test keys by direct message.

The Steam listing names Errata Studio Ltd as developer and publisher, sets an Early Access release for Q4 2026, and describes a roguelike autobattler with more than 200 creatures called Primals. Illuvium is not mentioned on the page.

Nothing To Stake For

Loadout, Warwick said, "will distribute tokens to the Illuvium staking contract and give people a reason to stake ILV and ILV-$ETH again."

Warwick's X bio lists him as founder of Loadout, a Solana trading platform for game tokens that routes 4% of each token's trading volume to the game's treasury and charges a 1% protocol fee. Its site reports 2.7K traders signed up and 37 studios confirmed, with no launch date. Warwick said an announcement is close.

Stakers have little coming to them now. DefiLlama puts holders' revenue at a $0 30-day run rate. Under Staking V3, launched on Base in November 2025, direct ILV rewards trigger at 150 $ETH revenue milestones — roughly $360,000 at current prices, against the $9,781 the protocol took in over the past month. Illuvium also says distributions resume only once its Safety Pool is fully funded under ICCP-22. Shards, the seasonal loyalty points stakers earn daily, are emitted at a rate that falls 2.97% every Monday.

Sentiment At All-Time Low

Warwick's February post described crypto sentiment as "at an all-time low" and crypto gaming as "even lower." A month later, Solana Foundation president Lily Liu said gaming on a blockchain "is not coming back."

Illuvium raised $72 million in a land sale over four days in June 2022, selling 19,969 plots by Dutch auction. DefiLlama counts $12 million in total capital raised by the protocol. Kieran Warwick is CEO of Illuvium Labs and his brother Aaron is game director.