Just recently a big gaming platform had said “yes” to bitcoin only to reverse its decision due to the cost. Now more gaming companies are evaluating the timing as they know that gamers, NFT purchasers, and crypto enthusiasts all run in the same circles.
The gaming industry has seen a massive surge in popularity in the past 10 years. No longer are video games obscure programming exercises, or children’s toys. Nowadays, more and more people of different ages play video games as a hobby, or in some instances, professionally. In a similar vein, the financial industry has seen a great change in the past ten years. Namely, the rise of cryptocurrency, which has, in the past decade, taken the finance industry by storm, and completely shaken it to its core. Once upon a time, the word cryptocurrency meant very little to most people. Today, however, the phenomenon has become mainstream, and very few people out there have not, at the very least, heard of cryptocurrency. It is worth noting, however, that cryptocurrency seems to be especially popular within the gaming community, and among gamers. So, naturally, the question to ask here is, can gamers use cryptocurrency to buy games?
How Can You Use Crypto When Gaming Online?
There are quite a lot of games released that feature, and in some cases encourage, in-game purchases using Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies). There are also a number of games, mostly online gambling games, that let players wager Bitcoin. Many consider online casinos to be the future of gambling, and with many of them featuring more than 1000 online slot games, this doesn’t come as much of a surprise. To keep up with the increasing interests of popular culture, many online gaming platforms have now begun accepting cryptocurrency as a viable currency. But, the question is, is it possible to buy games using cryptocurrency?
Can You Buy Games with Crypto?
The question does not have an easy answer. As we said before, there are many games that allow in-game purchases using cryptocurrency, but when looking at the mainstream platforms for purchasing video games, like Steam or Google Stadia for example, they don’t seem to accept crypto-based purchases.
For a brief time, Steam opened its doors for crypto investors, and decided to sell some of their games in exchange for Bitcoin, however, their decision was quickly overturned, just over a year later. The main reason for Valve’s decision on Bitcoin being overturned, had to do with cryptocurrency’s unpredictable volatility rate. The company simply did not have faith in the price of Bitcoin.
Another reason for it, seems to be that processing Bitcoin based transactions was more expensive than it was worth, and the company might have ended up losing money if they chose to proceed with the practice.
Will We See Steam Bring Back Crypto in the Future?
It is hard to say. Valve has not made a final statement regarding their decision to overturn cryptocurrency, however, the problems they faced have not been solved. On top of that, it was only last year that Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency in general) lost a lot of good press, when its top mainstream company supporter, Tesla pulled their support, citing environmental damages and detriments as the reason.
