Activision Blizzard's Activision Daniel Alegre

Yuga Labs' president will join the company as it gets ready to create the "Otherside" metaverse.

Activision Blizzard's Activision Daniel Alegre, who announced his resignation as president and COO on Friday, will join Yuga Labs in the first half of 2023. Nicole Muniz, who will become a partner and advisor, is replaced by him.

The US-based business, which unveiled the BAYC collection last year and sold some pieces for millions of dollars each, has been at the vanguard of the frothy but profitable market for digital art. Since then, the value of NFTs has decreased as a result of the wider collapse in the value of products associated to cryptocurrencies.

Alegre's hiring comes as Yuga prepares to introduce "Otherside," a virtual realm, early next year. Next year, the strategy seeks to compete with tech organizations like "Otherside." In the drive to create the so-called metaverse, where individuals may engage and play games in interactive online environments, the proposal seeks to compete with major companies like Microsoft and Meta.

We're up against giants in the metaverse, you know. We've known for a long time that we wanted to bring in someone with a proven track record of developing at the top level to help propel Otherside and our other ambitious projects to new heights, Yuga Labs co-founders Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow said in a blog post announcing the news.

“When it comes to the metaverse, we’re competing with giants. In
order to catapult Otherside and our other ambitious projects to new
heights, we’ve known for a long time we wanted to bring in someone
with a proven track record of building at the highest possible level,”
Yuga Labs co-founders Greg Solano and Wylie Aronow said in a blog
post announcing the news.

In a fundraising round headed by Andreessen Horowitz in March of this year, Yuga Labs raised $450 million, giving it a $4 billion valuation. As a result of various celebrities, like Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, and Madonna, investing in the cartoon apes, it has some of the most highly valuable NFTs in the industry.

In its less than two years of existence, Yuga has also paid an undisclosed sum for the rights to other well-known NFT brands, such as CryptoPunks and Meebits.

The 55,000 plots represented by NFTs sold out in a record-breaking launch when sales for land in the Otherside, nicknamed "Otherdeeds," began in April, bringing in about $300mn for Yuga. Since then, the typical cost of a deed has decreased by 70% to around 2.6 ETH ($1,200).

A class-action complaint accuses Yuga of working with celebrities to "artificially inflate and distort pricing" for NFTs while Yuga is also under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for securities disclosure. Any wrongdoing has been refuted by the company.

In 2020, Alegre joined Activision Blizzard and is now in charge of the studio's top games, including World of Warcraft and Call of Duty.

The games publisher has been accused of bad working conditions, sexual harassment in the office, and a $69 billion buyout by Microsoft during his leadership. The position of Alegre expires on March 31. Prior to that, he spent 16 years in several executive positions at Google, including president of global retail and shopping as well as president of global and strategic alliances.

Alegre stated that he was eager to help "create the future of the internet” at Yuga.

“The company’s pipeline of products, partnerships, and IP represents a
massive opportunity to define the metaverse in a way that empowers
creators and provides users with true ownership of their identity and
digital assets,” he added.