Social game developer Zynga has begun to accept Bitcoin Payments for select games.
The pilot feature was announced on the r/bitcoin subreddit of Reddit by the Zynga team, before any official announcement was made. The new payment option is currently in a pilot stage. Zynga’s Bitcoin support is currently for virtual goods on their games, FarmVille 2, CastleVille, ChefVille, CoasterVille, Hidden Chronicles, Hidden Shadows and CityVille.
BitPay is the processor behind Zynga’s new Bitcoin payment feature. BitPay recently received funding from Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures investment firm, and was recently found as the processor behind Porn.com’s new support for Bitcoin.
“We wanted to share with the r/bitcoin community that Zynga Inc. is now conducting a Bitcoin test with BitPay, a leading Bitcoin service provider, in select Zynga.com web games,” the Zynga team posted on Reddit, announcing the new payment option.
With Zynga’s undeniable presence in mobile gaming, it will be interesting to see how, and if, the Bitcoin payment option will be made available on iOS devices, given Apple’s unconfirmed opposition against the cryptocurrency.
Support for Bitcoin in gaming was until now rather esoteric, with smaller operations like LeetCoin providing Bitcoin waging for select multiplayer games on STEAM, and other proprietary gambling sites like satoshidice.com.
Zynga’s Bitcoin payment pilot is rolling out globally, and has been reported to be available in the UK. With diverse regulations from other countries, we will have to wait and see which regions Zynga will support the new Bitcoin payment option.
