While blockchain games like Axie Infinity, Gods Unchained, Star Atlas, Decentraland, and The Sandbox continue to make waves within the blockchain community, their influence over the mainstream gaming community remains limited.

A recent poll conducted by OnePoll revealed that blockchain gaming is still a relatively untapped field, with huge potential for game developers and studios to take advantage of.

Out of 2,000 adults surveyed, 52% were not familiar with blockchain gaming at all, while 32% were aware of it but had never actually played a blockchain game.

When asked about the loss of in-game purchases and downloadable content (DLC) due to studio closures and game servers shutting down, 63% of respondents indicated that customer refunds should be issued for in-game purchases and DLC lost due to games permanently shutting down.

Roughly one-third (34%) answered that the decision to shutter game servers and take video games offline should be decided by the gaming community in question. 

Related: Great Web3 games should be fully — not partially — on-chain

A list of the current top 10 play-to-earn blockchain games. Source: DappRadar

Blockchain gaming and persistent online metaverses offer gamers an avenue to prevent the loss of hard-earned in-game assets by linking those items with a nonfungible token (NFT).

By linking in-game assets to the blockchain, gamers now have an opportunity to resell their in-game items, characters, and other digital assets that would normally have zero resell value.

The highly centralized nature of the gaming industry and the increasing reliance on digitally downloaded or even streamed games leaves gamers at the mercy of studios and publishers who take games down from online stores and shut down online game servers with regularity.

Moreover, the current state of the gaming industry leaves little in the way of money-making opportunities for its players. Even if gamers could somehow resell their in-game assets, could players actually generate a palpable amount of income from their favorite video games?

The answer is typically no, though some examples of this exist in e-sports. A platform like Axie Infinity, an NFT-based blockchain game where players collect, breed, and battle characters known as Axies, attempts to fill this gap. 

In 2021, Axie Infinity generated an impressive $1.3 billion in revenues and created major sources of income for gamers in the developing world. Some of them earned as much as $1,300 per month playing the game.

Axie is a case study of how blockchain can leverage in-game assets and robust player economies to unlock value by creating resell markets for in-game items while also providing players with sources of income.