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Bitcoin payable games
There are many forms of payments that games could take for the october challenge, and it would be great to have more games accept bitcoins. If you haven’t heard what bitcoins are, here is a video that presents a nice summary:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/Um63OQz3bjo
If the game you are creating for the october challenge will accept bitcoins, comment on this post when you are ready for users to start using the game. Near the end of the challenge I will post up a link to this thread in the bitcoin forum to get gamers to come over from there.
Update:
==A quick and dirty guide to accepting bitcoins==
* Go to https://www.bitaddress.org/ , click on bulk wallet, and generate 1000 addresses.
* Whenever a user clicks to pay for something in bitcoins, take one of the public addresses and assign it to that user.
* Use this url: http://blockexplorer.com/q/getreceivedbyaddress/ADDRESS to check to see how much the user has paid into his account. You can use this for credits, and then debit against it when they buy something.
* To spend your bitcoins, you can import the addresses into a wallet at blockchain.info (use the wallet tab)
Tags: Bitcoin
I’ve been meaning to invest some cash in some bitcoins, but this seems like a much better idea.
Are we talking Bitcoins to buy it? Or Bitcoins as some form of microtransaction?
Either way, I’d definitely be interested in taking a look at it. They have always sounded like an interesting idea to me.
The thing I’m most worried about is that I keep hearing that the value of the Bitcoin took a huge nosedive again recently. I mean, yeah, it’s probably the first true virtual currency and all, but I keep hearing about hackings that cause the value to plummet, and that worries me.
It sorta went to the moon and then came back to reality, basically following the “Hype Cycle”. It has been trending steadily upwards for a while, but its value is not grounded in anything but its rarity, so it is open to fluctuations.
The way I look at it is, accepting bitcoins is more likely to increase sales with users that wouldn’t have paid for your game normally, so the only harm in accepting them is the cost in development time to add that ability.
Alright, well, how do I judge the value? If I were to price my game at $5, do I price it at 5 Bitcoins? 2 Bitcoins?
I mean, I see that right now they’re trending towards $10-ish in value, but IIRC, and I can’t find it now, but when teppy started accepting Bitcoin payments for A Tale In the Desert, they were sort of numerically in line with the cost in dollars, rather than lining up by value.
I’ll say, I am frightened of any currency where an algorithmic or processing power breakthrough could basically ruin my investment. And I have no interest in being involved in the research to ‘print money’.
For that matter, I prefer to invest in product and people rather than precious metals, charities and stock.
Our national currencies and associated economic infrastructures, are not exactly immune to algorithmic breakthroughs either.