Brave Bets on Social Heist Puzzles to Pull Players Into Its Gaming Push

Brave is betting that the future of Web3 gaming adoption will look less like DeFi dashboards and more like a reality-TV heist show that plays out across social media.

The company behind the privacy-focused browser announced the Brave Games on Tuesday, as a multi-week "vault heist competition" that will unfold across the Brave browser, X, and Discord.

"Brave Games is free and available to everyone. There's no need for gaming expertise or technical knowledge,” Luke Mulks, VP of Business Operations at Brave, told Decrypt. “If you're curious and like strategic thinking, you're really going to enjoy this.”

Beginning February 3, Brave Games brings together Brave, Midnight Network, and Mythical Games in partnership with Fanon, a social gaming platform. Pre-registration is open now on Brave’s website, and according to Brave, more than 4,000 players have already pre-registered.

How it works

Players sign up through Fanon's platform, choose one of three factions—Brave (orange), Midnight (black), or Mythical (purple)—and solve encrypted clues, complete missions, and race to unlock a digital vault across four weekly phases.

Players form alliances, identify undercover "moles," solve puzzles, and take part in prediction mechanics and social challenges across the browser, Fanon's platform, and social channels, including X and Discord.

The competition runs through the Brave browser on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.

The top 500 players will receive prizes from Brave and its partners, with final results to be announced on February 27.

Brave’s gamification push

Founded in 2015 by Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy, Brave launched the first version of its namesake browser in January 2016 in a bid to disrupt Google’s and Microsoft’s hold over user data.

Roughly a year later, the Basic Attention Token (BAT) was born, designed to reward users for viewing ads through the browser. Brave Games emerged from Brave’s Rewards 3.0 Partner Program, which tests new uses for the BAT token.

According to Mulks, the company is using the Brave Games to test whether participation-based mechanics can introduce new users to Web3.

“If we see success with Brave Games, we plan to learn and refine the formula into a scalable, reproducible recurring format that we can offer a range of partners, brands, and projects as an extension of what we currently offer with Brave Ads and Rewards,” Mulks said.

Standing in Brave’s way, Mulks said, are cultural rather than technical barriers.

"The biggest blockers we see to broader Web3 adoption at this point are a lack of meeting new potential users with something they're interested in, and the tribalism within the crypto native echo chamber," he said.

Despite the hopeful tone, Brave faces another issue: a decline in interest in Web3 games since their peak in 2022, with play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity and, more recently, Hamster Kombat.

If Brave Games gains traction, Mulks said it plans to offer it as a recurring format for brands and projects that work with Brave ads and rewards. The goal, Mulks said, is repeated exposure rather than immediate conversion.

"Your neighbors and family can't name 5 Web3 apps or things they use," he said. "We hope that, if successful, Brave Games can be one of ten things they've used by the end of the year."

Analysts have also not given up on Web3 gaming. Last April, Precedence Research said the global Web3 gaming market stood at $37.5 billion in 2025 and predicted that it could reach $183 billion by 2034.