CryptoKitties spawned a craze for blockchain in games.

The DeanBeat: The blockchain hype train comes to gaming

Blockchain this and that. You hear it all the time now. I get pitched a few times per week, or sometimes per day, on new game startups that are using the security and transparency of the decentralized ledger technology. None of them realize that they’ve already become a cliché or that someone else pitched me with the same idea a week or a few months ago.

Blockchain is software that gives companies a ledger where they can record and verify transactions among multiple parties without using intermediaries like brokers or exchanges or app stores.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.