Bitcoin Forum

Do you think the Lightning Network is fast and cheap enough to be used as a in-game currency within some of these MMO

games? When will we see our first game with Lightning Network payments? The popular MMO games have millions of users

and millions of daily transactions. Do you think the LN is ready for that kind of adoption? The whole idea with the LN is to

remove the micro transactions and to do them off-chain and MMO games are a ideal target for that. What do you think?

I think the LN is definetely a good way for realizing such a MMO currency system.

But i doubt wether this is what game publisher want.
They could simply use a centralized system (e.g. buy ingame currency with btc) to earn more from people who aren't even going to spend every last 'cent'.
It is definetely more lucrative for them to realize it that way than using a decentralized system.

At the current state the LN is not ready yet. It is still in beta and still has to be proven stable and secure before it is going to be used for 'mainstream' payments.

LN transactions are incredibly fast, from what I've seen it takes under one minute to get your transaction to be confirmed.
If this were implemented on MMO, the currency should arrive by the time the player closes their payment window.

I doubt any AAA company would implement this on their games, unless its part of the game's theme (Watch Dog 3?)
It would take an indie developer whose willing to experiment with LN and implement it all-together.

LN itself are still new, it is understandable that no friendly wallet exists, but as the technology matured, there will be LN Wallet popping out.
It just takes time.

Honestly, I think it will be a good idea because with this Lightning Network, people can make quick payments without waiting their transactions to be confirmed, I bet that sooner few new games will start to use the LN in-game.

Currently, i used bitrefill to recharge my phone using bitcoin, I am surprised that this site use the Lightning Network, I got my fund within few seconds, it's really amazing.

I could well imagine a game that did build itself around a decentralised currency becoming a monstrous success. It would instantly open itself up to a whole new breed of players and spawn a thriving in game economy that would morph into something truly transformative.

Current game developers are pretty dim to discount this as a selling point. Then again they could still act as gatekeepers and have undue influence over players and their ability to earn and trade. They'd wield far too much power.

We'll probably have to wait until there are open source and collectively hosted and maintained artificial environments before the potential is there, but when it is it's going to be amazing to witness.

I think these game developers are more focussed on "selling" their own game tokens than having to deal with Bitcoin and it's capped coins. Just imagine if you had the ability to create tokens, by just editing and configuring a few parameters in your own database. <Infinite supply of tokens>

You also do not have to worry about spam attacks and confirmation delays. Your main focus is just to protect your proprietary database and the generation of the game tokens. <not getting hacked>

The Payments are handled by Banks and PayPal, so you do not have to protect a wallet or cold storage. The tax implications are also easy, because the payment services are dealing with the complexity of currency conversion. You also deal with something that are already defined as a currency. <Not like Bitcoin that are not accepted as a currency in most countries>

Is the LN capable of handling that kind of volume? Nobody knows, because it is still experimental technology.  ??? 

I think the largest volume MMO games have been seen to be suitable for Ethereum-based token transactions - and that's a lot less than the capacity of LN. Of course, Cryptokitties and now POWH are showing that on-chain transacting isn't going to be good for games who don't want to annoy players with delays and spiking fees.

You're right though, most MMORPGs now are reliant on the same in-game currency models (expanding them as the only way to attain customer loyalty). Player attrition is the focus of their attentions but if LN could be used to facilitate that, I don't see why games wouldn't want to implement it. They don't always have to deal with complicated US regulations too... there are quite willing markets in Latin America (2nd fastest growing gamer community).

Remember that before Steam was accepting Bitcoin as a mode of payment but there comes a time where they pull off Bitcoin in their system and that is because of expensive transactions as well as their volatility. Now that the "expensive" part is solve there is still volatility left to handle. This businesses care more about getting their full cut done but when Bitcoin starts falling down from 20,000$ it looks like they it is not achievable for them. Remember they are still basing their games off the dollar and sometimes they are getting lesser after the payment is done. This is what other businesses have to risk if they want to accept cryptocurrencies as a mode of payment.

Except that merchants like Steam didn't *really* accept Bitcoin. They merely used a third-party payment processor that accepted Bitcoin. Lots of merchants claim the same, but never actually see a single satoshi or even ever hold a Bitcoin wallet. They get everything fully settled in fiat - had they been accepting actual Bitcoins since 2016, they'd probably have been so rich just from holding BTC.

Like you said, though, they should be basing everything on BTC now if they really want to step away from fiat.

The in game earnings are the domain of the players, not the service provider. They'll always charge in dollars as that's what their outgoings are too.

But you're also right. I'm sure many a player would go squealing to them. That's why it makes more sense to create something from scratch by the players and for the players who understand what the deal is from the start.

If a corporate game included crypto they'd rapidly find themselves becoming some sort of exchange and that's a head ache no one needs.

Well using one Crypto currency that can be used on all the different MMORPGs might be a advantage for both the players

and the developers. The exchanges already exist for Bitcoin, so there are no new untested services needed. I think it would

be great to use my bitcoins in every MMORPGs I play. You can farm bitcoins in the one game and use them in other games,

where farming is not possible.  :)

You have brought up a very good point here. In a way, these game developers wants to force people to use their in-game currency or token, to prevent them from leaving. They need something that would keep people playing the same game and not jumping from one game to the next.

So, if they used Bitcoin as a "default" currency in all games, people will jump from the one game to the next and they might lose players.

I think it would be quite the opposite though, because a wider target market will attract more Bitcoiners to games that accept it as a in-game currency. < I personally like the convenience of using one currency for all my games >

You made a very cool statement there.  ;)

I think it will be really cool if in-game-currency uses bitcoin,
Instead of getting 500 Gold, gamers can get 500 Satoshi
Then items can be purchased with Satoshi
Then the millionaire in-game also become millionaire in reality lol!

The dream...

The problem is, if this becomes mainstream and all MMOs start to use Bitcoin, then the price will skyrocket and in the end 1

Satoshi might end up costing you $1. Yes, it will be good for investors/hoarders like us, but it will be pretty expensive for the

millions of gamers out there. The gamers hate us already, because we are buying all the GPUs for Crypto mining.  ::)

Pricing would have to remain in the day's dollar value I presume otherwise the whole thing would seize up. I don't know where that would leave you if you wanted to offload an item that was suddenly massively valuable in BTC terms if you'd paid peanuts in satoshis a few months back.

Game designers create in-game currency and economy for way more reasons than just transactions speed/fees, the point of in-game money is to reward players for playing the game and game companies obviously can't reward players with real money, because it will be unsustainable and attract botters. What developers can do is to simply use Bitcoin as one of their payment methods and then allow players to sell their in-game items/currency on in-game market for Bitcoin. But they will still have to fight with bots, because bots easily ruin game experience for honest players, and in the end games succeed or fail basing on their quality, not some flashy features like blockchain and cryptocurrencies. It also might be the case that it's not profitable for game companies to allow p2p real money market, for example Blizzard have scrapped their real-money auction house in Diablo 3, and Valve made most Dota 2 items untradable.

What kind of havoc can bots get up to? Presumably the really obvious and odious ones can be nuked with ease.

If you are using Bitcoin as your in-game currency, you will be just giving away free money to botters. If in-game currency can be traded for Bitcoin on p2p market, then bots will also do a lot of damage, they will crash the price of in-game currency so honest players won't be able to get proportionally rewarded for their time spent and the game will overall feel like pay to win, which most players hate. And bots can't be nuked, you can ban some, but there will always be more and more, especially if they bring quick returns.

Not as an in-game currency, that's a horrible idea even if LN became free of transaction charge.
Lightning Network can be used as a payment method to purchase in-game credits an alternative of credit cards and game cards.

The best candidate of all the cryptocurrency-related technology we have now for in-game currency is: Smart Contract - Tokens.
Potentially, it can make the in-game economy hack-proof, hyper inflation-proof and duplication-proof.
Too-much-proof but imagine if an item like a Rare Sword can be limited to 20 units represented by a token with a hard cap of 20, the same limitation can be applied in the game's currency using another token (Initial supply will be distributed among NPC traders).
The problem is trading them, it's going to be slow, so the whole game must act like an exchange when it comes to trading items and currency, nothing is traded onchain within the game, but the items can be traded outside the game if they requested to take it out (withraw).

LN however, can't be used as part of a game's economy.

I think the problems will start when bots create havoc and also farming on a large scale. The On-chain Bitcoin transactions are for the most part, irreversible, so the game developer will not have a tool to stop this, once the channel is closed.

This will quickly ruin the in-game economy or the money pool, if someone figure out a way to exploit it. We regularly see how bad the third party code is in some of the exchanges. Can you think how hackers will be drawn to large MMO games, if millions of people are using Bitcoin on their platforms?  ::)

The first "gaming" I'd envisage Lightning to become successful for is online casinos, dice games, poker, sports betting and such.  Games where winning and losing money are the primary focus would be a natural fit.  Gambling is ideally suited to payment channels, due to money changing hands frequently between the customer and the "house", as Lightning effectively reduces costs for both.  There's also an element of simplicity in gambling that makes it easier to set up. 

Due to their relative complexity (at least compared to dice games), I don't think we'll start to see MMOs get in on the action for a while yet.  But no doubt it's something that will likely happen at some point, once Lightning has matured a little and the benefits are plain for all to see.

Hacking is not that bad in big online games because they are well-tested and critical bugs are quickly patched, but full control over any account also helps to reduce the damage when it happens, since they can just revert items. This ability to edit the database of a game is also very useful to restore accidently deleted or stolen items and currency, which can't be done with blockchain. So, hackers would be actually targeting accounts of gamers rather than game servers in order to steal something valuable. So, in general, blockchain is not suitable for typical online games, it creates more problem than it solves. I think it can only work if the whole game is built around blockchain, like CryptoKitties.

Sure if you like paying 0.65% per transaction fees to the banking hubs to play ping pong and we know from fees
on BTC that these fees can rise from $0.001 to $55 per transaction.

I get free home banking for fiat and other alt-coins are much cheaper to use and are "on-block" and I won't be using
Lightning any time soon.

I'd assume bots, hackers and farmers would only be as big of an issue as they are in the existing games where a fiat marketplace has emerged for in-game items.  They're probably more of an annoyance than a showstopper.

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Yes, we already know you'll be using the real banking hubs like a good little Ripple shill (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3196050.msg34416017#msg34416017).  You don't need to keep reminding us.  It's reassuring to know that you still feel threatened enough by Lightning to keep up this little campaign of yours.  It's been more than 10 days and I'm still waiting for an answer on how many times the word "fee" appears in the Ripple whitepaper, you worthless troll.

No mate, I just don't like seeing people ripped off by worthless paid trolls like you who spend the day spamming to make out that Bitcoin
is so fantastic and break out into a sweat when someone reminds people that Bitcoin won't scale or the rip-off $55 fees we were forced to pay.

Ripple for all I know has the word "Fees" all over it's white paper but one they are cheaper than Bitcoin and two they are not pretending to
be something they are not and three it scales.

Yeah, Ripple understands distributed (No single point of failure) but this was lost with the LN development team here but that's above your head I guess and
anyway I like EVO better than Ripple, ETH more than BTC so lets get your facts right.

Tell me DooMAD why do you keep punching with your face.

Your missing the art and hacking is a slow process of corrupting the data so they cannot simple roll back to a previous date, well that's
what someone told me.

I don't like to see people getting ripped off, which is why I would never advocate a currency where those in authority can freeze your account.  Like Ripple can.  



That's not how fees work in Bitcoin.  You aren't "forced" to pay that much, people merely chose to.  Ripple chooses your fee for you.  That's what force looks like, cretin.



one:  Only sometimes and centralisation is still a higher cost than any network fee
two:  They're pretending to be a cryptocurrency and they aren't
three:  Because it's centralised



Ripple = 55 banking hubs
Lightning = ~1500 independent nodes and growing

Hmm... which one is more distributed?  Apparently basic numeracy goes over your head.  

Now stop shitting up the thread, troll.  

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That seems like a sensible assessment.  In terms of withdrawal, the thought occurs that while the player is actually playing the game itself, the amount they accumulate will depend on how long they're playing and how good they are at the game.  There's no point in pre-loading a payment channel until the game knows how much they need, so it's better to wait until the player wishes to "cash out".  It wouldn't be practical to maintain the channel in real-time.  In game credits maintained separately would indeed be the better option.

oh yes dip stick I choose to donate about $120 to miners during Decembers, of my own free will to carry out four transactions and it was a good job I didn't call you
a wanker in the last post because I notice mummy is hanging around and just deleted another post of mine and andy is bound not to notice the "Cretin" insult and others you
make so run along, mothers skirt is that way >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


1500 single points of failure to anyone with just one channel open to one of these banking hubs, too many bangs on the head me thinks.

#Anti-Cen please stop attacking people in my thread and stay on topic please, because that is one reason why your posts

might be disappearing.  ::)

Now back to the topic at hand. I personally think the Bot problem might be reduced if withdrawals were capped and managed.

As soon as a bot or a farmer are identified, trade restrictions could be implemented to reduce their influence in the game.  ???

You will then have to detect account farmers and ban multiple accounts.  >:(

I do not think it is a good idea to use LN  as part of a game's economy.

I can see this happen when LN scales into the millions.

+1 for wondering whether publishers would want to use a crypto system. Maybe if the same in-game money is used across multiple titles?

As others have said, I believe that many developers will prefer the option of having their own tokens or using other protocols more specific and worked for these situations.

To understand why to use other tokens, just remember the tokens of a casino. They could use cash in casinos. But for a number of reasons, including some related to the psychological, it is better to have own tokens.

Now, the transaction medium between fiat and tokens will definitely be using LN. It is unlikely that the most practical way to acquire game tokens will be with current methods. Bitcoin could be much more easily responsible for this type of integration. And we will still have the huge market of people that neither fiat will have more.

Well, we have determined that the Lightning Network will be a good solution to buy those tokens then. I think it might even

be more advantageous because credit card transactions can be reversed. The transactions will also be almost instantaneous

and that would make it a good payment options for these in-game tokens. The obvious next question would be, what Alt

coin might be more suitable for in-game currencies, if Bitcoin with the LN is not?