What Is Crypto Gaming and Why Does It Need Safe Multiplayer?

Safely Game on Blockchain – Shockbyte James Zinn

Crypto gaming, NFT games, and blockchain gaming all fall under the umbrella of play-to-earn games. They fulfill a new and unique market, burgeoning from the expansive success of many online NFT markets, such as the widely popular Bored Ape Yacht Club, that sell unique digital assets. These games seek to provide NFT and crypto-based ownership of items through progression and gameplay, whether time-gated, based on money spent, or entirely skill-based. There have already been thousands of NFT gaming attempts, with likely thousands of coinciding failures.

What evidence is there that a marketplace like this within gaming could even exist? Plenty! For example, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins go for cents on the dollar, but if you’re lucky, you could get a few that run for upwards of $10! Some of the most expensive skins in the game will run you anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000. But despite people paying each other real money, nobody actually owns the real-world AK47 skins. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins are slightly different from true NFTs, but they do show market potential as well.

What Is Crypto Gaming? Or Blockchain Gaming?

In modern gaming, there are many different situations where players are presented with opportunities to earn items in-game. It may be something they find randomly throughout exploration, by defeating another player, or by paying additional money. In crypto gaming, in-game items can be sold to other players for real-world cash or an equivalent that assigns real financial value to the items, making it a great way for users to potentially earn cryptocurrency.

Top gaming crypto can be even more lucrative for users and for developers as well. This makes the game’s integrity extremely important to the players, as blockchain technologies are tied to real monetary value that can impact users' lives if the platform is hacked or users are cheated. When that happens, users can lose their hard-earned money, and the game studio can lose credibility among players. Just take a look at Axie Infinity, a crypto game that was hacked in 2022. Hackers ended up stealing a reported $620 million in cryptocurrency from the game.

Though the crypto games space has gone through some controversy, there's still a lot of excitement surrounding yet-to-release games. One example of an upcoming multiplayer NFT game is called Deadrop, a collaboration between Midnight Society and the popular Dr. Disrespect. In the gameplay footage, proper gameplay and positioning will provide players with the most financial benefits. The best players will continually escape with the most expensive in-game items. We expect a continued shift into crypto gaming as time goes on, with major studios like Ubisoft putting more resources into crypto gaming.

(Image credit: Midnight Society / Deadrop)

The Current Missing Links of Blockchain Gaming

For decades, gaming has had players who have traded items in-game by paying real-world cash. Even in the modern area, players buy RuneScape Gold and items with real-world cash and then trade them in-game, despite the fact it’s against the rules. This concept of paying to use and own an in-game item is exactly what NFT gaming is about, and it’s extremely unsafe financially – and is why it’s against RuneScape’s terms and conditions.

Blockchain is designed to decentralize the entire process, adding a safety net for everyone involved. The blockchain also differentiates itself heavily from the RuneScape example, as gold in RuneScape and skins in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are owned by Jagex and Valve, respectively. The blockchain catalogs all items purchased and securely records their rightful ownership after each purchase. If Valve’s servers were destroyed, players may lose access to proper ownership of their Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins. Alternatively, blockchain would decentralize the process and keep the information intact.

Reliable Hardware for Blockchain Gaming

Game developers working on NFT games and blockchain gaming are rightfully concerned about the potential public backlash due to issues in their games and the financial hits they may receive from unfair players flooding into the multiplayer play base. The concept of play-to-earn games is enticing and modern gamers are eager to monetize their hobby into a long-term career. However, blockchain gaming requires multiplayer gaming servers, and with multiplayer comes a variety of issues, from DDoS attacks and cheating to blockchain server challenges.

Setting up blockchain servers requires extremely reliable server hardware that many companies can’t afford, especially startup gaming studios. That makes server infrastructure companies such as OVHcloud a smart choice. On top of the initial blockchain servers, multiplayer gaming servers require advanced DDoS protection, 24/7/365 uptime, and global connectivity. These requirements are almost completely impossible to achieve without a dedicated server solution company.

Revisiting DDoS Protection for Gaming

In a previous post with OVHcloud Shockbyte discussed DDoS protection in gaming, but there are a lot of dangerous implications in multiplayer gaming when financial incentives are added to the mix. We also shared examples of nefarious players taking advantage of unprotected servers, launching DDoS attacks against players and networks during live eSports events where cash rewards were on the line. Cash rewards aren’t the only incentives for bad actors, as players who participated in Riot Games’ Clash tournament of January 2021 also saw servers go offline due to a DDoS attack.

Thankfully the items received from Riot’s League of Legends Clash tournaments are only cosmetics with no real-world value unless the account is sold, which does happen. But imagine if the items acquired from a tournament like that were blockchain tradable. Game developers of blockchain games must understand how critical and reliable DDoS protection is for multiplayer servers and which server hosting providers to trust. At Shockbyte, we highly recommend OVHcloud’s game DDoS protection, unrelenting infrastructure, and exceptional customer service.

The Best Gaming Crypto Needs 100% Uptime and Blockchain

Unfortunately, due to the nature of blockchain gaming being vastly different from casual forms of media NFTs, the owners of in-game NFT items such as guns, swords, and skins, all suffer from a single issue. If the server host isn’t online, players can’t interact with or even see their items. Fortunately, due to the decentralized nature of blockchain, true ownership of the NFT items will remain the same even if the servers go offline.

For large-scale hosting providers, 24/7/365 uptimes typically aren’t problematic, despite unexpected outages. But for younger game developers interested in setting up multiplayer servers, this can mean headaches and hundreds of additional hours spent on maintenance and upkeep. However, dedicated server hosting is the only viable option for blockchain multiplayer due to the unreliability of peer-to-peer connections and the vulnerability of player-hosted servers. That’s why choosing to partner with Shockbyte, which has used OVHcloud’s infrastructure as a backbone to a decade’s worth of gaming experience, is the smart choice for your hosting needs.

If you’re looking for a high-performance game server or want to speak to a solutions architect, speak with an expert at us.ovhcloud.com. Interested in learning more about crypto gaming? Check out our partner, Shockbyte's insightful blog on crypto gaming and why it requires safety here.

The following was written by Shockbyte PTY. The claims, opinions, and views expressed below are those of Shockbyte and do not necessarily reflect those of OVHcloud US.