The Potential and Reality of Cryptocurrency in Video Gaming

Cryptocurrency promises to change the world, but it might start with games. The ubiquity of microtransactions in modern video games makes the industry ripe for a crypto insurgence. With gamers spending an average of $85 each on the (free-to-play) game Fortnite,
generating $300 million a month for the game’s creators, cryptocurrency luminaries are looking hungrily for a way to get them to do it using their tech.

Probably the most obvious way for cryptocurrency to slot into the games industry as it stands is as a replacement for traditional card-based online transactions. Developers could end their dependence on external payment mechanisms by creating their own,
entirely new online currencies, which players would then use to buy gear and cosmetics, both from each other and the devs. It would mean an added degree of control for the developer and, perhaps most enticingly, an end to the vagaries of regional pricing,
with the price of everything being measured in the game’s…