It's been a while since I bought a game on Steam, but I went to Joltfun to try to purchase one, and it seems to be dead (or at least broken and unusable). That was my go-to source for purchasing games with bitcoin. Anyone heard anything about problems with it?
And how are folks purchasing games with lightning these days? Buying Steam cards on Bitrefill?
No idea, but I was just thinking about games that either accept Bitcoin as payment or use sats as an in game currency.
I have a friend of a friend who is developing a game at the moment and when I eventually meet him I'd like to talk about what they plan on doing. I have a few good and bad points for using sats as an in game currency, but haven't spent much time thinking about it.
Recently i've been feeling like the best thing for bitcoiners to do to support bitcoin is just to make the best products they can. Don't set out to make a "game that uses bitcoin"... set out to make the best game possible. Then, integrate bitcoin into it once you've made a great game. Same with any other product, honestly. People will use bitcoin when there are things they want to buy with it. Wanting to buy the thing comes before the choice of what medium of exchange to use.
I have an idea for a game mechanic that I believe is best served by in-game bitcoin.
Basically, being able to fund your character’s initial purse and withdraw your final balance upon completion.
The in-game economy would have a money supply that’s capped by the sats used to purchase the game and whatever endowment you give your character.
This would fix the problem of getting way too rich, which always seems to happen at some point.
We should do some brainstorming on this. It’s something I also like thinking about and I expect there’s some real potential in this direction.
I think I listened to this a while back:
https://anchor.fm/s/7d083a4/podcast/play/10973124/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F2020-2-10%2F55647667-44100-1-a91a170c5b72c.mp3
Looks like it's dead as none of the links work.
SN is a great place to brainstorm or discuss. This one might be best to get some game designers to weigh in.
I love the idea of sats for in-game items (especially if there's also the opportunity to earn sats from the game as well), but I also really like the idea of paying once for a game.
I like the idea too as there are no gate keepers like Steam settling in game currency for dollars.
Some of the issues are that if you're earning sats it probably shouldn't be too many so that you get gamers who actually like playing the game rather than making money.
Paying for items with sats is a good way for the game company to build their reserve. Question is will the item outcompete Bitcoin? This might add unwanted volatility. Like if someone had a rare sword and wanted to sell it for a higher price later on they may end up earning less sats.
There are other issues like people wash trading sats or something along those lines. You wouldn't want your game to be known as a wash trading service. So I think selling items for sats needs to be on the cheaper side.
The other thing is that an in game currency (sh$tcoin) is literally just printing money. So besides having principals it's a hard one to convince.
Not saying Joltfun is doing this, probably not, but you should be wary of other sites that sell keys or steam gifts (especially for indie games). Some of them sometimes end up selling from batches meant for reviewers or friends, or keys from other regions, and those can end up getting blacklisted later.
The safest option is to buy steam cards on Bitrefill. That way you avoid that risk, and you are also eligible for refunds to your steam wallet if you decide you don’t like the game.
yes, sadly it stopped working quite a while ago.
i found https://play-asia.com as an alternative; sometimes there are good deals.
Thanks -- I'll check them out.
So was there where my friend bought a game by 2 ₿ in 2011. What a idiot.