The post Why Blockchain Games Have Betrayed Digital Property Rights appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Every year, my company Emfarsis partners with the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) to conduct an industry-wide survey of blockchain gaming professionals. And every year, the overwhelming majority of respondents agree that digital asset ownership is the single biggest benefit that blockchain can bring to games; this year was no different, with 71.1% ranking it number one. Even with more people joining the industry — in 2024 we had three times as many respondents as compared to the inaugural survey in 2021 — it’s always digital asset ownership that comes out as the industry’s undisputed North Star. But while we hail digital asset ownership as blockchain gaming’s defining feature, most blockchain games today are free-to-play and don’t require asset ownership at all. On top of that, much-hyped promises that rest on the premise of digital asset ownership remain largely unrealized. Apparently, blockchain gaming professionals have found themselves in a curious bind where the best proposition they have for gamers is the same thing they are making excuses for. Digital asset ownership has always been central to blockchain gaming, offering players true digital property rights to own, trade, and monetize in-game assets in the form of tokens and NFTs. Going back to play-to-earn’s heyday of 2020-21, digital asset ownership was how you could tell the difference between a blockchain game and a traditional game. Early games required players to buy one or more NFTs upfront. But this created a barrier to onboarding, as many couldn’t afford the NFT(s) or simply weren’t enthused about having to buy an asset in a game they didn’t even know they liked yet. Of course, these NFTs weren’t just any old game assets, they were yield generating. Buying an NFT in a blockchain game was more like investing in a tool that you need to do a…

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Filed under: News - @ December 20, 2024 1:12 am