It was only a matter of time until Blockchain technology made its way into the gaming space. With the industry itself seeing upwards of $109 billion in revenues in 2017, the level of hype and opportunity bridging blockchain and video games has never been higher.
This has seen some of the industry’s biggest names inking strategic partnerships with a number of different venues. This includes gaming giant, Crytek, which this week teamed up with startup group Crycash to create a new currency for gamers that will allow in-game purchases and other benefits.
Pent up demand for in game monetization
The market for such a development is very strong given the up trending net worth and user growth in the gaming space. The ability to bring the advantages of cryptocurrency to game purchases, advertising, and rewards is also a massive draw for users and by extension gaming and platform developers.
Consequently, Crycash will be launching a new initial coin offering (ICO) next week on December 12 for its Crycash currency. The token sale is designed to raise money from investors for its decentralized ecosystem of products for gamers that include several different initiatives.
This also entails a new wallet and reward interface called Plink – gamers who complete certain tasks in-game and view ads will be rewarded with tokens, which can be used to get in-game items. Crycash did not pioneer this ecosystem - such initiatives are gaining traction amongst player bases.
As such, Crycash will launch a Plink app that players can utilize to communicate with each other as well as to manage their tokens. Monetizing gaming experiences has been a long-standing goal of many gamers, which Crycash is intent to take advantage of. The app serves a wide range of social features, such as helping you track what your friends are playing and joining them in a game.
Heavyweight support
Helping support this project will be Crytek, which will be lending its weight as one of the premier developers and publishers of games such as Far Cry and Crysis. The group will use the Crycash platform as an advertising module to attract new players to its current games such as Warface.
The joint effort will kick off via the integration of Crycash into its Warface Turkey game by Q1 2018. However, Crycash is not solely bound to Crytek, and has already reportedly been seeing additional partnerships with other leading game publishers as well.
Wachtang Budagaschwili, Crycash CEO, noted an interview with GamesBeat: “I’ve been in the Payments industry for six years trying to solve monetization issues for games, and that led to the Crycash idea. We think this will help game developers solve problems like user acquisition and help gamers. We’re glad that we have been able to partner with Crytek as our first customer.”
The announcement comes just a day after Steam decided to pull the plug on Bitcoin payments for its platform, even as demand continues to swell. The group cited the highly volatile nature of Bitcoin, which had been driving up its transaction fees.
