AMD has officially joined the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) and in doing so, becomes the first hardware manufacturer to do so. In joining the partnership, the CPU and GPU maker also says that it will help to “promote the development and proliferation of new blockchain-powered gaming platforms”.
To kick off its newly acquired membership, AMD also announced that it is partnering up with blockchain technology provider, Robot Cache, and will be helping it launch its online gaming marketplace, ULTRA, in June 2020. Naturally, Robot Cache’s digital market will be powered by both AMD’s Ryzen-powered CPUs and Navi-powered Radeon graphics cards. In addition, the company will also use AMD EPYC CPUs in its back-end servers, as well as to facilitate block producing.
Outside of gaming, blockchain technology is more commonly associated with the volatile world of cryptocurrency. That includes the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum, to name a few. Games based on blockchain technology, though, are very obviously different from game titles developed on more traditional platforms.
For example, rather than having a game run via a centrally controlled server – think Blizzard’s MMORPG, World of Warcraft or Valve’s Steam platform – Blockchain games will instead spread out its assets among its player base. A primary reason for this is also due to the decentralised nature of Blockchain; instead of a closed-loop development, game assets made with blockchain are open to analysis and are also reusable by anyone in-game.
As it stands, hundreds of blockchain-based games already exist online. Locally, mobile game developer appxplore launched its own blockchain game, CryptantCrab, last year.
AMD isn’t the only major brand name to join the BGA. The company also lists down major video game developer and publisher, Ubisoft, as one of its partners. Although what role the company has to play in this alliance is still very much unknown.
(Source: AMD, Blockchain Game Alliance, Crowdbotics via Medium, Notebookcheck)
