Atari planning a breakout of blockchain technology

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Atari played a huge part in introducing video games to the public in the 1970s, selling millions of consoles and games. CEO Frederic Chesnais now hopes Atari can introduce a new revolution to games development with blockchain technology.

Speaking to GamesBeat, the gaming channel of VentureBeat, Chesnais answered questions about Atari’s new blockchain deal with Animoca Brands, who they will work with to develop blockchain equipped iterations of their hit games RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch and Goon Squad.

Atari’s CEO does not see any major pitfalls with blockchain technology, telling GamesBeat, “I think blockchain is here to stay. It’s here to stay in many businesses—finance, identity, and also in gaming.”

His company is first and foremost a games development company now, and Chesnais is keenly focused on how blockchain technology can help revolutionize how developers monetize their work. He elaborated, “Let’s say I create a one-minute song track or an environment or an animation or a character, an avatar. With blockchain, you’ll be able to tag that asset, identify it, and trace it. Especially with things like music, animation, or characters, if it’s used along the way by one game or two games, if it’s sold five or 10 or a million times, we’ll be able to trace it.”

This is not Atari’s first splash into the blockchain industry. Atari announced last year they had started work on two new cryptocurrencies for internal use.

This application of asset tracking is sorely needed by the industry. There’s been great reporting from games journalists, notably Jim Sterling, on the proliferation of asset flipping and theft as it’s gotten easier to publish games to platforms like Steam. Developers put a lot of effort into creating these assets, and to see them go uncredited, or unpaid, for their work is criminal. This application of blockchain technology will help solve the problem.

The Bitcoin SV powered Metanet will also go a long way to solving problems like this. It will revolutionize the way we interact with the internet, allowing users to collaborate and monetize their work, and totally prevent this kind of intellectual theft.

For now though, Chesnais sees a very specific application of the technology for RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch, explaining, “For the moment, what we have in mind is something like, you create a coaster, you blend it with another coaster, and then, you can share it or swap it or sell it and build your collection of coasters. That’s one of the applications we’re working on.”