Blockchain technology entered our lives via cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrencies became one of the most popular financial investment tools. Starting from the beginning of this year, cryptocurrency owners made lots of profit until the massive pullback happened on the 19th of May. In addition to being a financial investment tool, we have seen people talking about whether any of the cryptocurrencies can be the future form of money that we will use in our daily lives.
Some companies like Tesla announced that they are going to accept Bitcoin as a payment method but after a while they backed off from the decision. Moreover, there are some online gambling opportunities Ethereum Casinos or Bitcoin Casinos, where you can deposit cryptocurrencies and start online gambling.
As cryptocurrencies get more popular and the demand for them is getting increased, the governments are getting concerned about cryptocurrencies even if they don’t take any action against it, the announcements that are made by governments or big companies have a huge impact on the market.
However, in this article, we will focus on how blockchain technology is changing the gaming industry and why it is powerful against the traditional transaction methods used in the industry before.
Easier In-game Purchases
If you are a game developer, you can easily help players by letting them make purchases by using cryptocurrencies. In this case, the players won’t need any third party payment providers to process their payments and they can instantly buy in-game items.
Also because the third party providers are eliminated in cryptocurrency transactions, players don’t pay any fees for the transactions. Some of the blockchain start-ups are already noticing this opportunity. For example, Enjin introduced a concept for game developers which include software development kits, wallets, game plugins and other apps for item management and payment. In addition to this, they introduced a new token called ENJIN Coin, which will be used for the transactions in their platform.
Safer and More Secure Environment For Game Developers
Blockchain technology uses a complicated data encryption technology to secure crypto token transactions. By using the computer technology we are using today, it is nearly impossible to hack these encryption techniques. In addition to this, nearly all of the cryptocurrencies are decentralized and the hackers won’t be able to destroy a decentralized blockchain network since there is no specific server to take down.
Nodes have the distributed databases in a shared manner and each node has the whole information in the database. The existing information on the blockchain can’t be deleted or changed by the hackers and it is impossible to perform a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack against the blockchain systems. The consensus methods used in the blockchain systems such as Proof of Work or Proof of Stake keeps the network safe.
True Ownership and Secure Storage
Unlike the currency situation where you don’t really own an in-game item, a benefit of blockchain in gaming is that players can really own their items. The difference is made by the smart contracts which govern the transactions inside the game on a blockchain system. Smart contracts take place automatically upon fulfillment of conditions coded in them and once the conditions are met, the results are irreversible.
When you launch a blockchain-powered game, all the purchases that have been made by players using smart contracts are transferred to their public addresses. In addition to this, smart contracts allow transparency, which means that all the transactions are recorded on the blockchain and they can be viewed by all the players.
The blockchain is decentralized and the records are unchangeable. Nobody can change the public addresses where the assets are recorded and nobody can change the ownership of the in-game assets.
New Opportunities for Collaborations
Blockchain technology is revolutionizing the gaming industry by enabling an open communication between players and developers. This is happening because blockchain applications are driven by community consensus and it is not top-down.
A player or another developer can come up with some ideas to make a game better and if the community agrees, those changes will be made in order to make a game better.
Blockchain Prevents Frauds
Earlier in the article, the strength of the blockchain system against hackers was explained. However, the smart contracts running on a blockchain can be manipulated if they have bugs. Earlier in 2016, we have seen in the Ethereum DAO case that those bugs can be exploited by hackers. In the case of Ethereum DAO, attackers manipulated a loophole in the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) smart contract.
The attackers were about to make 3.6 Million Ethereum out of this attack, however, the transparency of the blockchain prevented this scam. As mentioned above, everyone can read the transactions recorded on the blockchain and thanks to this Ethereum community could discover the hack. They used a hard fork to prevent the transfer and refunded the money to DAO investors.
Blockchain technology anyways provides transparency and in a case of attack like Ethereum DAO but if you plan to develop a game on the blockchain, make sure that you code your smart contracts properly. The connection between gaming and blockchain is getting stronger naturally and if you are a current or future game developer, it is good to adapt blockchain technology into your projects as it is helpful for both the developers and the gamers. So, if there is a tool which will create a win-win scenario, why not use it?
Conclusion
To sum up, starting from 2013, cryptocurrencies gained popularity day by day and nowadays it has reached to a point where nearly everybody on earth knows about them. Thanks to the development in cryptocurrencies, the blockchain system is also developing. Bitcoin being the first, Ethereum the second and Cardano the third, we have seen three different generations of blockchain until today and it looks like the development will keep going.
The gaming industry is also taking advantage of those developments as blockchain provides true ownership, faster and cheaper transactions and prevents fraud while being transparent. For those developers who are working on new games, it is a good idea to keep in mind that building a game on blockchain will create gains for both the developers and the gamers.
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Source: https://www.fintechnews.org/how-blockchain-games-are-changing-the-games-industry/
