Polyient Games will invest in early-stage startups making blockchain game infrastructure

Blockchain gaming has to walk before it runs. That’s why Polyient Games, a recent spinoff of incubator Polyient Labs, is starting to invest in early-stage infrastructure companies that will enable blockchain games. Blockchain uses peer-to-peer decentralized networking to build a transparent and secure ledger and is the technology behind cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which has fueled a speculative craze (and a bust and a new craze) in the past few years.

While cryptocurrency has had ups and downs, Polyient Games director of innovation Craig Russo said in an interview with GamesBeat that blockchain makes sense in gaming because it can uniquely identify in-game items or avatars and who owns them. This means it can be used to enable commerce in collectible or unique items in games and transfer them from game to game.