The intersection of Bitcoin and gaming

[Kyt Dotson]

I am trading Craftcoins on cryptsy.com, but they haven't got me any profit, just some small losses. With more companies accepting Bitcoin, it's only a matter of time before the rates go through the roof again 

I am curious to know more about the current adoption of Craftcoin and the number of servers that implement that software.

Does anyone have any numbers or insights? I've spoken with the developers briefly, but it's the weekend and I don't want to hassle them too much until I get better bearings on its use and vision.

[BigJohn]

I'm a game developer, and we thought at one point of using Bitcoin as the in-game currency of a space-civ type game. The main problem we ran into is security. We can't expect our players to all keep their own wallets and run a Bitcoin node. They could if they wanted to, but for the average player we'd have to generate a wallet for them and keep it on our servers. This means that in addition to a game, we basically also need to make and support an online wallet. Most importantly, keeping it secure, which is way outside our realm of expertise.

We figured we'd be the target for theft and it just doesn't make sense to take on that much responsibility.

[pening]

I'm a game developer, and we thought at one point of using Bitcoin as the in-game currency of a space-civ type game. The main problem we ran into is security. [...]
We figured we'd be the target for theft and it just doesn't make sense to take on that much responsibility.

So, you wont be taking credit cards or other payments?  Otherwise, this conclusion is kinda scary.  That aside did you consider an alt, either one of the others out there or your own?  And if not, why not?

[occham]

I'm a game developer, and we thought at one point of using Bitcoin as the in-game currency of a space-civ type game. The main problem we ran into is security. [...]
We figured we'd be the target for theft and it just doesn't make sense to take on that much responsibility.

So, you wont be taking credit cards or other payments?  Otherwise, this conclusion is kinda scary.  That aside did you consider an alt, either one of the others out there or your own?  And if not, why not?

There is an industry and regulations around credit cards.  The game company has a known exposure and cost model.  They don't have that with bitcoin.  I don't blame them for pushing it off for 'in game' purposes.  They could still use bitcoins to buy game time.   That would be no different than any other CC transaction from their perspective.  They'd only need to maintain a 'company wallet' for the transaction.

[BigJohn]

Yeah, exactly what Occham said.

It's actually even simpler than that. If we make the in-game currency some arbitrary thing (like gold in other MMOs, we went with Credits for the sci-fi theme), then we can easily have you buy a pack on Steam. We don't ever even see your credit card. No need to ever charge our customers directly.

Our thought was to take it up a notch and use Bitcoin as the actual in-game currency. But that would be akin to associating a credit-card with each account, and having the in-game currency be the balance on that credit card. Then our in-game currency is essentially the USD, Euro, or whatever the player is using. This would be a nightmare. Just the exchange from one fiat to another would be huge. Bitcoin theoretically solves all those problems, which is why we considered it. Plus it's just cool as shit to do something like that.

But securing everyone's wallets is just not something we can handle.

[black_swan]

This game is very fun, I played it a lot in Beta.

https://www.bitfantasy.com/

It is an RPG that lets you buy items from the stores using bitcoins. You can also sell things to other players in bitcoins. Or you can just play the game without using bitcoins.

It seems cool, I will install it and I will give it a try. Thanks

[pening]

It's actually even simpler than that. If we make the in-game currency some arbitrary thing (like gold in other MMOs, we went with Credits for the sci-fi theme), then we can easily have you buy a pack on Steam. We don't ever even see your credit card. No need to ever charge our customers directly.

Ah, i see, because i was worried you'd be taking CC details form customers and thinking securing them wouldn't be important.   

I reckon you should still do an in-game crypto coin, just pick one of the others.  Risk of attack can be mitigated by accessing the wallets only in game, shirley?

[edmundedgar]

I've been thinking that Bitcoin would be a great currency for OpenLifeGrid OpenSim.. It might even become the glue that holds disparate worlds together. But I guess I'm tilting at windmills.

I've written a money module for this. But I'm not getting a lot of nibbles from grid owners, and when the exchange rate goes up like it has default transaction fees get a bit on the high side.

Right now a lot of grids use OMC, which is quite a nice solution, and you can buy OMC with bitcoins. But it's obviously dangerous having all your money with one vendor, and a small tech company at that. I'm thinking if and when OMC falls over that might be a good time to make a push for bitcoin or some alt-coin as the currency for the metaverse.

[jbreher]

Right now a lot of grids use OMC, which is quite a nice solution, and you can buy OMC with bitcoins. But it's obviously dangerous having all your money with one vendor, and a small tech company at that.

Thanks for the word. I was unaware of OMC. While VirWoX is a little coy on the matter, it looks as if they are the 'central bank' behind OMC?

[BigJohn]

I reckon you should still do an in-game crypto coin, just pick one of the others.  Risk of attack can be mitigated by accessing the wallets only in game, shirley?

It's a bit too late now. This project is already under way.

But the problem in theory still remains. It's that we'd have to keep their private keys somewhere, and it's then it's our responsibility to secure them. Either we keep the keys on our servers, but then our servers become a target. Or we keep them on the client, but then those files become the target for trojans and whatnot.

[edmundedgar]

Right now a lot of grids use OMC, which is quite a nice solution, and you can buy OMC with bitcoins. But it's obviously dangerous having all your money with one vendor, and a small tech company at that.

Thanks for the word. I was unaware of OMC. While VirWoX is a little coy on the matter, it looks as if they are the 'central bank' behind OMC?

Yup. There seems to be some connection with Graz University - it seems like it's formally administered by VirWox, but in practice somebody there is doing the legwork.

[Trance]

I have sold World Of Warcraft accounts and gold for BTC!

Very lucrative connection between gaming world and the BTC world, the correlation between an in game currency within a MMORPG game and the values of the currency compared to Bitcoin are amazing, almost creates me to think that some of the people whom created Bitcoin could have potentially worked for a gaming company and saw that they can actually create a value for a "commodity" such as World Of Warcraft Gold and so forth!  Vires in Numeris!