Can Blockchain Be Used In The Gaming Industry?

Mention blockchain to most people and they will relate it to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. It is also being widely used in the legal world and in many other areas where quick and secure documents need to be dealt with. Retailers are beginning to find it useful, educational institutions are utilizing it, and now some people are wondering, can blockchain be used in the gaming industry?

What Is Blockchain?

Blockchain is a technology that came to everyone’s notice when it was used for Bitcoin transactions. Put in simple terms, it is described as a digital, decentralized ledger that is fast and secure. From a financial world point of view, it means no middleman is needed if you want to pay for something, doing away with bank or credit card charges. If you make a payment through blockchain, it goes straight to whoever you are paying. This has also proved invaluable for things like contracts that need to be seen by several people. More than one person can view it at the same time, and any changes made to the contract are instant.

Once transactions or changes have been confirmed, they cannot be altered, making any payments much more secure.

Could It Be Useful for the Gaming Industry?

Some developers, such as Ubisoft, think so. They say blockchain could be used to register a user’s in-game content and items, which would make them 100% owned by the player, with no possibility of anyone else taking them. Its decentralized ledger would show the items to be theirs alone, and if they have managed to acquire rare and sought-after items, they could be worth money.

Some of the games reviewed on Gameguideworld.Net fall into this category where players collect things from the world they are playing in, and it would be good to know they are your property and that no hackers could come and take them off you.

John Hanke, who created Pokémon Go, sees harassment as another Internet problem that blockchain may be able to help with.

Stopping Harassment

There is no way you can know who you are really speaking with over social media or when playing games online. They can say they are whoever they want, and sometimes when people just take them at face value, they end up getting harassed. Hanke thinks that blockchain will get around the identity problems and make it less likely that gamers will suffer from nuisance players.  He also thinks that it will be used in other areas for the same reason. He said at a GamesBeatSummit that blockchain has a host of potential applications that can be combined to make new games.

There is no doubt that blockchain is a technology that is here to stay, and some people think it will be the biggest change to the Internet since it was first launched. Only time will tell if that assumption is correct, but certainly it looks like it may be useful to the world of gaming.