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Param Labs said in a corrected April 17, 2024 announcement that Steve Young, formerly an Activision Blizzard consumer-products executive, joined the Abu Dhabi-based game studio’s board. The company presented him as a strategic adviser on user acquisition, game development, commercialization and revenue strategy—not as its chief executive or day-to-day operating head. The corrected release replaced an April 15 version and is the controlling announcement. Business Wire’s corrected release does not independently audit the business metrics it reports.
What was announced
Young joined Param Labs’ board as the company sought broader adoption for its blockchain game Kiraverse and related digital-asset products. A board appointment can bring strategic oversight, industry contacts and commercial advice, but it does not establish that Young took operational control or that he would run the studio’s daily business. The announcement disclosed no compensation, equity stake, voting rights, committee assignment or time commitment.
Param Labs described Young’s remit as helping with user acquisition, game development, commercialization and monetization. Those responsibilities fit his reported background in consumer products, retail distribution, licensing and game revenue management.
Young’s career background
According to Param Labs’ release, Young joined Unilever in 1992 in sales and category management and later became a senior brand-marketing manager. The company attributed responsibility for more than $180 million in annual revenue and marketing budgets above $40 million to his Unilever career.
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After leaving Unilever in 2005, the release says Young joined Activision Blizzard. He initially worked on retail programming for brands including Spider-Man and Call of Duty, then became president of Activision’s consumer-products group and chief revenue officer. Param Labs attributed worldwide digital and retail software sales and more than $2.8 billion in total revenue responsibilities to that role. These are company-supplied biographical figures, not independently verified financial records in the announcement.
What Param Labs and Kiraverse are
Param Labs characterized itself as an Abu Dhabi-based independent game-development and technology studio focused on blockchain gaming, artificial intelligence, digital ownership of in-game assets and user-generated value. It also said its tools were intended to bring mainstream users into Web3 experiences. Those descriptions come from the company rather than an independent industry classification.
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The studio identified Kiraverse as its flagship title: an open-world action shooter that it compared broadly with Fortnite and PUBG. The release said the game could import NFTs from different collections and game ecosystems, creating a cross-IP and cross-ecosystem experience. Kiraverse was described as being in beta in April 2024; that historical status should not be treated as its current status.
Why the appointment mattered strategically
Param Labs was trying to bridge two audiences: existing Web3 users familiar with wallets and NFTs, and mainstream players who generally expect a game to work without managing blockchain assets. Young’s reported experience in mass-market brands, retail channels, licensing and monetization is relevant to that distribution challenge.
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His appointment nevertheless shows intent rather than an outcome. The announcement provides no evidence that it produced a major product launch, retail distribution agreement, funding round, user-growth milestone or solution to Web3 onboarding friction. It also does not say whether players needed a wallet or NFT to play, whether NFTs were optional cosmetics, how transaction fees worked, or what rights buyers received in the underlying intellectual property.
What the company reported financially
Param Labs disclosed several figures in the corrected release. They should be read as management claims, with the definitions and accounting methodology left unspecified.
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| Claim in the April 2024 release | How to interpret it |
|---|---|
| $4 million of revenue over the previous 11 months | Company-reported revenue; the release does not say whether it was audited, gross or net, or how it was divided among games, services, licensing and digital assets. |
| Kiraverse growth of 100% annually for the previous couple of years | An ambiguous growth statement because no starting base, period definition or measurement method was provided. |
| More than 30,000 NFTs sold | A sales count that does not reveal unique buyers, repeat purchases, prices or secondary-market activity. |
| More than $1.5 million in revenue and over $8 million in NFT-marketplace trading volume in the prior year | Revenue and marketplace volume are different measures. Trading volume can include transactions between third parties and is not equivalent to Param Labs’ revenue. |
| More than $1 million in value distributed to NFT holders by the first quarter of 2024 | “Value” could include skins, rewards or other digital benefits; the release does not establish that this was cash paid to holders. |
The release does not provide audited statements, marketplace-by-marketplace data, geographic detail, user counts, retention rates, currency-conversion methods or a breakdown between primary sales, royalties, services and licensing. Readers should not describe the $8 million figure as game revenue or the $1 million figure as investment returns.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Partnerships and ecosystem references
The announcement cited relationships involving LOUD and creator Bruno “Playhard” Bittencourt, GameStop NFTs and the Buck-the-Bunny character, Immutable X custom characters, and Pudgy Penguins NFT projects. It also named Animoca Brands and the Abu Dhabi government among backers or investors.
Those references are not necessarily equivalent. A named relationship could be a strategic partnership, an asset integration, a commissioned customer project, a marketing collaboration or an investment. The release does not disclose deal values, ownership stakes, exclusivity, minimum guarantees or whether any relationship remained active after April 2024. The syndicated version of the announcement is available from Press Release Hub; it adds no independent verification.
Pixel-to-Poly and the business beyond the game
Param Labs described Pixel-to-Poly as a service that converts 2D artwork into game-ready 3D characters. The company said the price was $199 per character in the April 2024 announcement. That is a historical price, not a current quotation.
Such a tool could lower the cost or time of adapting existing intellectual property for games, NFT integrations or brand collaborations, and could create business-to-business revenue separate from player spending. The announcement gives no technical benchmarks, delivery times, supported formats, licensing terms, ownership rules or quality comparisons, so its commercial performance cannot be inferred from the stated price.
What remains unknown
- Kiraverse’s current development status, active-user base and retention.
- Param Labs’ current revenue, profitability and funding position.
- Whether Young remains involved and what authority the board role carries.
- Whether the cited partnerships and integrations are still active.
- Current Pixel-to-Poly pricing and product capabilities.
- Wallet requirements, account recovery, blockchain dependencies, transaction fees and the legal rights attached to game assets.
These unknowns matter because blockchain games can expose users to token-price volatility, wallet-security failures, marketplace outages, changing game economies and regional legal restrictions. Owning an NFT does not automatically confer copyright, licensing or commercial rights to the depicted character.
How significant is the appointment?
It is a credible strategic addition based on the company’s description of Young’s consumer-products and gaming experience. It signals that Param Labs wanted help with distribution and commercialization as it pursued audiences beyond established Web3 enthusiasts. It is not, by itself, evidence of mainstream scale, financial sustainability, audited growth or validation of the NFT business model. Any present-day assessment of Param Labs, Kiraverse, Pixel-to-Poly or the cited partnerships requires information newer than the April 2024 announcement.
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