Why won't Riot games accept Bitcoin

[miztaziggy]

Anyone know?

It seems that anyone wanting to further the interests of Bitcoin would be pushing HARD for Riot to accept BTC.

If you don't know - Riot run League of Legends. It's by far the biggest game in the world, see here:



See it has 3 million individual users every month compared with about 600k playing the top 100 PC games on Steam.

They make their money by selling RP (Riot Points) that players use to buy character upgrades. People spends small fortunes on this crap. Look on e-bay, there are accounts for sale with literally hundreds of skins which equates to hundreds of $.

Now it's mainly kids that play this game, I guess lots of them take money from Daddy's credit card to buy this stuff, but surely this is a prime example of where Bitcoin (internet cash) could be king?

Put yourself in a 15 year old's position - you have no credit card so can't pay for RP with Paypal or Moneybookers, however you do have some cash and could buy some Bitcoin. Send to Riot, get the RP, everyone's happy.

Riot games must turn over millions of $ selling these skins, if 25% of that was Bitcoin it would be a big boost to the whole Bitcoin ecosystem.

[gagalady]

I don't personally play LOL but as far as i know no MMORPG's accept bitcoin as a payment method to buy virtual goods. I don't talk about those MMO-gambling games like dragon tails.

[bountygiver]

Anyone know?

It seems that anyone wanting to further the interests of Bitcoin would be pushing HARD for Riot to accept BTC.

If you don't know - Riot run League of Legends. It's by far the biggest game in the world, see here:



See it has 3 million individual users every month compared with about 600k playing the top 100 PC games on Steam.

They make their money by selling RP (Riot Points) that players use to buy character upgrades. People spends small fortunes on this crap. Look on e-bay, there are accounts for sale with literally hundreds of skins which equates to hundreds of $.

Now it's mainly kids that play this game, I guess lots of them take money from Daddy's credit card to buy this stuff, but surely this is a prime example of where Bitcoin (internet cash) could be king?

Put yourself in a 15 year old's position - you have no credit card so can't pay for RP with Paypal or Moneybookers, however you do have some cash and could buy some Bitcoin. Send to Riot, get the RP, everyone's happy.

Riot games must turn over millions of $ selling these skins, if 25% of that was Bitcoin it would be a big boost to the whole Bitcoin ecosystem.

Why not post it in LoL forums instead of here?

At least someone in charge will see it there.

[birkomester]

They will not accept bitcoins soon.
Maybe after 1-2 years.
There are already many topics about that in the lol forum.

[franky1]

transaction fe's and satoshi dust means the minimum spend is 6c with 5c fee..

many sites want the ability to do micro transactions where people can buy add-ons and bullets for fractions of pennies.

but Luke JR has totally caused the micro transaction market to not work

why would any site accept a 25c transaction with a 5c fee (20%) this is why zynga is not adopting bitcoin right now, even after alot of their devs have been trying it out...

[Littleshop]

transaction fe's and satoshi dust means the minimum spend is 6c with 5c fee..

many sites want the ability to do micro transactions where people can buy add-ons and bullets for fractions of pennies.

but Luke JR has totally caused the micro transaction market to not work

why would any site accept a 25c transaction with a 5c fee (20%) this is why zynga is not adopting bitcoin right now, even after alot of their devs have been trying it out...

Why would zynga or Riot allow transactions under $2.  They don't with credit cards, they wont either with Bitcoin.  They will have a minimum charge, and transfer that value into the users account just like with a credit card.  On a low value transaction they would make MORE money with Bitcoin even with the charges because credit card charges are still higher. 

[byt411]

transaction fe's and satoshi dust means the minimum spend is 6c with 5c fee..

many sites want the ability to do micro transactions where people can buy add-ons and bullets for fractions of pennies.

but Luke JR has totally caused the micro transaction market to not work

why would any site accept a 25c transaction with a 5c fee (20%) this is why zynga is not adopting bitcoin right now, even after alot of their devs have been trying it out...

Why would zynga or Riot allow transactions under $2.  They don't with credit cards, they wont either with Bitcoin.  They will have a minimum charge, and transfer that value into the users account just like with a credit card.  On a low value transaction they would make MORE money with Bitcoin even with the charges because credit card charges are still higher. 

Even accepting bitcoin as a minimum is a good start. That way I won't have to buy paysafecards to get what I want in LoL.

[Lauda]

You need to give them enough reasons to start accepting it, then they just might do that.

[farlack]

Hardly anyone is going to go out and buy bitcoin to buy lol gear. They will use their cc

[Littleshop]

Hardly anyone is going to go out and buy bitcoin to buy lol gear. They will use their cc

Don't be so sure. And the bitcoin fees would be lower to the merchant for almost any amount vs the same amount via credit card. And no charge backs from parents.

[Light]

Put yourself in a 15 year old's position - you have no credit card so can't pay for RP with Paypal or Moneybookers, however you do have some cash and could buy some Bitcoin. Send to Riot, get the RP, everyone's happy.

I don't know about you - but where would a 15 yr old kid go buy some BTC with cash, kids at that age can't even drive so I'm pretty sure their parents would be more willing to either pay for it with their CC or just buy them an RP card. If anything it'd be easier for someone to buy a card than buy BTC and just use that. Anyways, not to mention - much of Riot's userbase doesn't know/use Bitcoin so it wouldn't really be adding anything for them.

[x00x90]

I think they need, in a initial stage, create a "proxy" fictional unit like webmoney created WMX, so they will not deal bitcoins directly.

it would work like a gamecard/ "gamecoin"

[jonald_fyookball]

I've corresponded with a very talented artist who was hired by riot.

[Lauda]

I've corresponded with a very talented artist who was hired by riot.

Could you give us a name? He'd have to make a very good presentation to his superiors.

[jonald_fyookball]

I've corresponded with a very talented artist who was hired by riot.

Could you give us a name? He'd have to make a very good presentation to his superiors.

I'd have to dig through some old emails.  Was a whille ago, Not sure if it makes sense to try to proselytize bitcoin lol, but I guess it's possible

[Dogtanian]

Why wont any other store accept bitcoin? The only thing we can do is keep asking and keep promoting it. the benefits will eventually become clear to most.

[torry28]

They do not accepting Bitcoin because players there not requesting it to be added. So not worth the trouble to accept Bitcoin for now. For child it is easier to buy the RP card than buy Bitcoin...

[Lauda]

They do not accepting Bitcoin because players there not requesting it to be added. So not worth the trouble to accept Bitcoin for now. For child it is easier to buy the RP card than buy Bitcoin...

You're saying that the majority of the players are children? Since when is being a child the same as being a teen?

[vnvizow]

Well there's always the doubt and confusion about Bitcoin being a scam, we'll just have to wait it out. As soon as one of them falls the others will join suit 

[Aswan]

Anyone know?

It seems that anyone wanting to further the interests of Bitcoin would be pushing HARD for Riot to accept BTC.

If you don't know - Riot run League of Legends. It's by far the biggest game in the world, see here:



See it has 3 million individual users every month compared with about 600k playing the top 100 PC games on Steam.

They make their money by selling RP (Riot Points) that players use to buy character upgrades. People spends small fortunes on this crap. Look on e-bay, there are accounts for sale with literally hundreds of skins which equates to hundreds of $.

Now it's mainly kids that play this game, I guess lots of them take money from Daddy's credit card to buy this stuff, but surely this is a prime example of where Bitcoin (internet cash) could be king?

Put yourself in a 15 year old's position - you have no credit card so can't pay for RP with Paypal or Moneybookers, however you do have some cash and could buy some Bitcoin. Send to Riot, get the RP, everyone's happy.

Riot games must turn over millions of $ selling these skins, if 25% of that was Bitcoin it would be a big boost to the whole Bitcoin ecosystem.

Riots marketing strategy is to what makes their game so successful, mainly by elimination most, if not all competition in parts of the gaming industry.
They aggressively try to force contracts to gaming organizations and events making them drop the competitions games in the event, or making esports organizations drop teams from other games in order to receive a lot of money from riot games.
It's a pretty successful marketing strategy regardless of what people think about it.
This however is not possible with bitcoin because of the lack of a central authority over bitcoin they could force a contract upon to not engage in business activities with the competition.
That said, Bitcoin doesn't fit into their marketing strategy at all.
I wouldn't be surprised if companies competing with them would start accepting bitcoin in the not too distant future tho