The first known game to utilize blockchain technology was CryptoKitties, launched by Axiom Zen in November 2017 for personal computers. The player purchased NFTs with Ethereum cryptocurrency, each NFT consisted of a virtual pet that the player could crossbreed with others to create offspring with combined traits as new NFTs. The game made headlines in December 2017 when a single virtual pet was sold for over $100,000 USD. CryptoKitties also revealed scalability issues for Ethereum-based games when, shortly after launch, it created significant congestion on the Ethereum network, with approximately 30% of all Ethereum transactions at the time coming from the game and congestion delaying player transactions. Axiom Zen feared that Ethereum would continue to struggle after they launched a mobile version of the game, especially with the influx of users from China.
The Sandbox is a platform that in 2018 bought the trademark of the 2012 crafting game of the same name. display them in their virtual landscapes.
Axie Infinity, released by Sky Mavis in 2018, is an example of a “play to earn” game, where the game encourages players to buy and then improve NFTs through in-game actions, which are then resold to other players by the publisher. , and the player is compensated for their work. In the Philippines, where the game was most popular, some players were able to earn enough to make a living by playing and participating in the game’s financial structure. However, after a hack in early 2022 that stole over $600 million dollars from publisher Axie Infinity, the number of players in the game dropped significantly, affecting the game’s economics.Sky Mavis removed references to “play to earn” on its websites and marketing as the value of its tokens plummeted. Thus, it changed the term “play to earn” to “play and earn”.
In mid-2018, Ubisoft also co-founded the Blockchain Game Alliance along with a number of leading blockchain companies.
By the early 2020s, there was no breakthrough in blockchain-enabled video games. Such games tend to focus on using blockchain for speculation instead of more traditional forms of gameplay, and this offers limited appeal to most players. Such games also pose a high risk to investors as their returns are difficult to predict. However, the limited success of some games, such as Axie Infinity, during the COVID-19 pandemic and growing corporate interest in meta-universe content has rekindled interest in the field of GameFi – a term describing the intersection of video games and finance typically supported by blockchain. currency – in the second half of 2021.By the end of 2021, several major publishers, including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Take Two Interactive, and Square Enix, said their companies were seriously considering blockchain and NFT-based games in the future.
In October 2021, Valve Corporation banned blockchain games, including those using cryptocurrency and NFT, from being placed on its Steam digital storefront service, which is widely used for PC gaming. The company said this is a continuation of their policy banning games that offer in-game items with real-world value.
Ubisoft announced its foray into blockchain gaming with its Ubisoft Quartz technology, based on the Proof-of-stake Tezos cryptocurrency, which Ubisoft claimed was more energy efficient. Quartz allows players to buy and sell digits, which are special items to customize characters in the publisher’s games, and the service first launched for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint in December 2021.