Love cats but can’t take up the responsibility of bringing one home? Imagine experiencing the joy of adopting and breeding a cat, except, virtually. What’s more, your cat cannot be replicated and can never be taken away from you. Games based on blockchain technology, such as Dapper Labs’ CyrptoKitties, where each CryptoKittie is a non-fungible token (“NFT”), facilitate just that. Launched in 2017 as the first ever blockchain game, CryptoKitties now has over 1,28,000 current users worldwide.
The vast scope and potential of blockchain technology has attracted the gaming industry over the past few years. With the success that CryptoKitties has garnered, more blockchain games, such as Axie Infinity, have now been introduced. The popularity and success of blockchain games has been such that it has pushed close to 60% of American and UK-based online game developers to start using blockchain technology, according to Business Insider. Even major companies such as Ubisoft and Electronic Arts have expressed their interest in introducing elements of blockchain technology into their games in the near future.
Closer home, several Indian companies have also commenced their foray into blockchain game development. Prominent amongst them are Avisa Ventures and NODWIN Gaming.
To comprehend this dynamic environment, we have published this primer, where we explore the concept of blockchain games, the legal validity of making such games available in India, the various intellectual property protections that game developers and players may avail under Indian law, and whether the current regulatory framework in India is sufficient to protect the interests of game developers and players.
But first, what is blockchain?
Blockchain is a decentralised database that stores information. It relies on technology that allows for the storage of identical copies of this information on multiple computers in a network.
What are blockchain games?
- NFTs
NFTs represent in-game virtual…
