AMA Recap: The Devs Are Back, Chubkins Goes Deep, and That Grass Tile Bug Explained

The team took a short break, and honestly, they needed it. This week's AMA marked their return, and there was a lot to catch up on: a Brazil-themed quest, a new NFT collection party, an honest conversation about the state of web3 gaming, and a full hands-on demo of Chubkins, the studio's new mobile app.

Here's everything you need to know.

🇧🇷 Taste of Brazil: Quick Quest, Cute Reward

Marjorie's back from her travels and can't stop thinking about feijoada: the classic Brazilian dish. Head to Terra Villa, craft one (it takes about an hour and a handful of ingredients), and you'll unlock a tropical fruit headpiece inspired by Carmen Miranda.

The event was put together as a surprise for the Brazilian creators in the Pixels community, coordinated by a community member reaching out directly to the team. Simple, quick, and a nice nod to a big chunk of the player base.

🐣 Malo Heads Integration + Energy Party

A new NFT collection, Malo Heads, has launched and is now popping up around town in-game. To celebrate, there's an integration and energy party happening Friday at noon UTC worth clearing your calendar.

The Honest State of Web3 Gaming

One of the more candid parts of the AMA: the team acknowledged that web3 gaming, as a category, isn't in a great spot right now. Rather than chase competitors, their focus has been on solving one specific problem — making in-game earning sustainable without depending entirely on crypto market cycles.

That's the "Return on Reward Spend" work that's been ongoing behind the scenes for a long time. It's slow, unglamorous infrastructure work, but it's what keeps a game like Pixels running indefinitely rather than living and dying with the market.

Chubkins: The Web2 Growth Bet

The biggest chunk of the AMA was a live demo of Chubkins, the team's new mobile app — a virtual pet game you can play solo or with a friend.

Where it stands:

1. Over 50,000 downloads in early access (currently Android only, US market)
2. Day 1 retention around 35%, Day 30 around 3–5% for standard cohorts
3. For players who engage in multiplayer/co-op specifically, Day 1 retention jumps to 60–70% and Day 30 to roughly 20% — numbers the team called "best in class"
4. Customer acquisition cost is averaging around $18 per user through paid ads — a number they consider strong for a mobile game funnel

Why it isn't branded as Pixels: This was intentional. Crypto branding creates friction with app store guidelines, so Chubkins was built and launched as a standalone web2 product. The plan is to prove the app works and scales first, then explore ways to connect it back to the Pixels ecosystem — potentially through staking or yield mechanics down the line, handled carefully to stay compliant.

What's next for Chubkins:

1. An iOS build is targeted within the month — this is considered the major unlock that will let the app exit early access and expand to more markets
2. Brazil is a market they specifically want to launch in, but it comes with stricter regulatory requirements around age gating
3. Monetization (subscriptions, more in-game content) is the current focus area, since lifetime value per user still needs meaningful improvement
4. The team is heavily focused on boosting multiplayer adoption, since that's where retention is strongest — expect more prompts and exclusive content tied to co-op play

For context on how far it's come: the very first version of Chubkins (posted publicly back in March 2025) was pixel-art styled to visually match Pixels. The team made the deliberate call to move away from that art direction in favor of something with broader, more universal appeal — a decision they said was difficult at the time but they now stand by.

NFT Land Bug: The Grass Tile Issue

Some NFT landowners have been unable to place decorations on a specific tile — the game blocks the placement as if something else already occupies that spot. The team confirmed this is a real, active bug, and they genuinely don't know the root cause yet. It would require a very specific manual change in their internal tools to happen, and that hasn't occurred.

If you're affected: ping the community team in Discord and they'll manually fix it on your land as soon as possible.

Related to this, the team also flagged a broader industry issue — several third-party NFT infrastructure services (used for metadata and image fetching) have been degrading or going unmaintained, which is contributing to display issues across older NFT collections generally, not just Pixels. They're evaluating building more of that infrastructure in-house.

Behind the Scenes: How the Neon Zone Almost Didn't Ship

A fun bit of dev-side chaos: the Neon Zone map redesign — the one players have been loving — was completely wiped from the preview environment four days before its Monday launch. The team worked with their developer to recover it from a backup just in time. A good reminder that even well-loved updates sometimes come down to the wire.

Store & Economy: What's Coming

Players have been asking for merchant ship and store updates. The team's response was candid: the core issue is an oversupply of Buoy Bucks in the economy, and a proper fix requires a larger rebalancing effort rather than a quick patch. In the meantime, expect more raffle-style store additions, since those can ship faster while the bigger economic fix is worked out.

Using AI to Build in Pixels

Since Pixels is open source, community members have been building their own additions to the game using AI coding tools. The team specifically called out that results vary a lot depending on which AI model you use — weaker or lower-tier models tend to produce weaker results, while more capable models make it significantly easier to build something functional inside Pixels.

What's Next

The team confirmed the next AMA will shift focus back to core Pixels updates and work through community suggestions that have been piling up. No new industry or "Chapter 4" content is planned in the near term.

Missed the stream? This recap covers the highlights — for the full conversation, catch the next AMA live.