Implementing BitCoins in games

[daedeloth]

Hi,

I've been working on accepting Bitcoins in the browser based games I develop. I'm using MyBitcoin for it, since they have this nice little callback that I want to use to send the virtual goods automatically.

However, I'm wondering how much I should charge in bitcoins. Last week I read a bitcoin was worth about 7 euro, which was really nice because my standard packages are worth about the same so I could charge 1 BTC for a package. It seems, however, that the value has increased a tiny bit. Is there any way to automise this value calculation?

You can check out the payment gateway at:
http://www.dolumar.com/

(Or if you just want to check out the payment gateway, go here: http://credits.browser-based-games.org/default/buy/?game=1&user=1)

Any feedback on changes I should make are very welcome (and also feel free to test the system ;-)).

Greetings,
Thijs

[daedeloth]

(Oh, also, is that nice little bitcoin logo open source, or shouldn't it be used?)

[stakhanov]

I would use the weighted average of the last trades at Mt. Gox. The trades can be downloaded very easily in JSON format.

I'm pretty sure the logo is free to use, but I'll leave it to others to give you a definite confirmation.

[elggawf]

I would use the weighted average of the last trades at Mt. Gox. The trades can be downloaded very easily in JSON format.

I'm pretty sure the logo is free to use, but I'll leave it to others to give you a definite confirmation.

Yeah, it's tough to set out prices at the moment with the volatility... I'm no expert in economics but I think the value will stabilize if there's more coins in circulation, so it's just a matter of taking some risks at the moment so you're in a position of power when things stabilize.

We were using the value of "last" at mtgox, but we've switched to the 24h weighted average via bitcoincharts, which you can get programatically here: http://bitcoincharts.com/t/weighted_prices.json

It's still possible someone could take advantage of you slightly on the backside of a big downswing after a long flat period, but the risk is acceptable to us because of the tiny amount of interest we've had so far in people buying Mumble servers for Bitcoin (ie, if someone sneaks in a trade to us while it's at ~$25 and the price comes back down to $10, we can afford to "lose" that - well, really all we're doing is selling a service to one person at a discounted rate for a while). I haven't bothered to hack together an automated process yet, simply because my plate is already full and interest is so low (I'm not exactly getting swept off my feet accepting BTC trades) but I'm confident we'll get there eventually.

[cloud9]

Here's some implementations:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bitcoins-Wallet/198753920160158