Gibraltar court ends 2-month freeze of 542M PLAY tokens amid legal dispute

Update (April 22, 5:50 am UTC): This article has been updated to include a statement from Christina Macedo.

Update (April 22, 11:14 am UTC): A correction has been made reflecting that Ready Maker (Gibraltar) Limited is not a subsidiary of US-based Ready Games.

The Supreme Court of Gibraltar has reversed its decision to freeze 542 million PLAY tokens in a court battle between two companies tied to the Web3 game-creation platform PLAY Network.

In an April 17 judgment, Gibraltar Supreme Court Judge John Restano undid his earlier February freeze of the tokens, finding it could have hurt the value of the tokens and that the evidence filed was insufficient to continue the freeze.

“Whilst there may be many reasons for the drop in value of the tokens, the evidence before the court suggests that these proceedings are a factor in that regard,” he wrote.

US-based Ready Makers, which operates as Ready Games, and its founder, David Bennahum, have filed a legal dispute against Ready Maker (Gibraltar) Limited, and its CEO, Christina Macedo. The suit claims she took over the firm and its PLAY token that is used as a reward on the PLAY Network.

Ready Games won a freeze of the tokens in February, with the Gibraltar-based Ready Maker, operating as PLAY Network, handing them over to a court-appointed custodian.

The 542 million PLAY tokens are nearly two-thirds of its current circulating supply and are worth around $2.6 million. The token’s price has plummeted by over 97% since it launched in December, according to CoinGecko.

Judge Restano said the evidence filed by Ready Games for the freeze was “far from impressive, and raises more questions than it answers.”

He added he did “not consider that this is a case where the order should be re-granted in any event,” and cited Ready Games’ failure to disclose that it was in administrative dissolution at the time of filing for the token freeze, which he called “a significant omission.”

Macedo said in a statement that she saw “months of false and misleading statements made during the dispute,” and the judgment “restores clarity for our community and partners.”

Ready Games’ Bennahum told Cointelegraph that it has filed to lodge an appeal alongside “an urgent application with the Gibraltar Court of Appeal asking them to either stay the discharge of the original injunction or grant a new injunction” so the tokens could again be frozen pending the appeal's outcome.

He added that his company disagreed with the court’s decision to lift the token freeze, saying that the Gibraltar-based firm was in an “alarming state.”

Bennahum reiterated an earlier claim that the US-based Ready Games created Ready Maker in Gibraltar with the US company’s intellectual property and funding “specifically to serve as our token launch vehicle.”

“We maintain that Ms. Macedo and associated parties have wrongfully seized control of this entity and its assets,” he said. Judge Restano said in his judgment that Macedo disputed Bennahum’s claim, and regulatory filings purportedly show she is the sole controller and ultimate beneficial owner of the Gibraltar-based firm.

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Ready Games had said in a February statement that its court action was to “recover control” of the Gibraltar company.

It added that a Delaware business court issued a temporary restraining order that required Ready Gibraltar to restore Ready Games’ access to the firm’s tech stack, such as “GitHub repositories, cloud systems, and domain accounts.”

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