Finally owning digital items yourself – why blockchains are the future in games

The rare sword, the cool outfit or the highly leveled character: Many games offer an infinite amount of content and items that players buy to gain an advantage or to stand out from the crowd. The crux of the matter is that despite the money invested, the buyers do not own any property rights – these remain with the publishers or developers. This is where blockchain technology comes in.

Thanks to the blockchain, digital goods will actually belong to gamers. The idea behind the blockchain is that protected digital goods (or NFTs, non-fungible tokens) are given a unique digital fingerprint, which is then stored in a secured chain of information – the blockchain. This chain is considered immutable and tamper-proof. In this way, the blockchain protects against fraud and prevents the illegal trade of gaming items on platforms such as eBay.

This creates a whole new value for the items, because even if games or games services are discontinued, the assets remain in the possession of the players and can be transferred to new games. These items are then paid for with cryptocurrencies such as the Games Coin, which was designed specifically for games.

This trend toward crypto gaming could revolutionize the entire games industry: Players and developers would come together much more easily and could then develop game concepts and worlds together as a community, independent of large publishers, which would otherwise not have been possible.

Hardly any other industry is as well suited to the blockchain and cryptocurrencies as games, since many game worlds already have their own currency. And when you consider that the gaming community already consists of over a third of the entire world population, the possibilities of a blockchain- or games chain-based gaming industry really do seem limitless.