Polyient Games has teamed up with automated esports tournament platform Community Gaming to launch a $100,000 tournament series as a way to introduce mainstream gamers to cryptocurrency and blockchain.
Polyient, the parent company of Polyient Games, has invested heavily in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which use blockchain, a secure and transparent digital ledger, to verify one-of-a-kind items. NFTs can verify the authenticity and rarity of digital collectibles and in-game items. Polyient will draw attention to both mainstream esports games and blockchain games.
Polyient founder Craig Russo said in an interview with GamesBeat that the decentralized tournament series with Community Gaming is a step toward bringing mainstream adoption blockchain and cryptocurrency.
“We saw an opportunity to build an inroad with mainstream gaming via esports through a collaboration with Community Gaming,” said Russo. “We see this as a massive opportunity to begin to educate these esports gamers on this next-generation technology.”
The blockchain games track will focus on the indie game arena, featuring blockchain-enabled games such as Axie Infinity and Skyweaver. This track will have significant ties with the Polyient Games ecosystem, the blockchain gaming and NFT platform that features decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, including a dedicated decentralized exchange for in-game currencies.
Above: Polyient Games is investing in blockchain games infrastructure.
Image Credit: Diego Rodriguez and Cody Robertson
“You can take that token and convert it into another in-game currency, you can convert it into Ethereum, or you can actually take it and go and buy NFTs with it via our marketplace system,” Russo said. “We have a mainstream game track with Valorant and other titles, and we have a blockchain game track where there’s an early competitive ecosystem forming.”
To kick off the partnership, Polyient Games and Community Gaming will be hosting the Valorant Gauntlet Series, a $20,000 three-part Valorant tournament series. The first installment will begin April 3, with a $5,000 open tournament. The concluding tournament features a $10,000 prize and will consist of the highest performing teams from the first two events. Payouts for the entire series will be in both U.S. dollars and the Polyient Games Unity Token (PGU), the reward redemption currency for the Polyient Games ecosystem.
“We’re going to be doing a special NFT reward for the winners of the tournament,” Russo said. “This is going to be like artwork, and it’s going to be the collectible item.”
The tournaments will be hosted by Community Gaming and streamed live on the Polyient Games Twitch channel. The tournament series is made possible by the payment technology provided by Community Gaming, which enables the payment in both dollars and cryptocurrency token rewards.
“We want to leverage this opportunity to not only educate users on blockchain gaming, the NFT market, but also allow them to dive into it via these token rewards,” Russo said. “So we’re building out a lot of educational materials and bridges between crypto blockchain gaming and, mainstream esports.”
Community Gaming lets anyone to organize grassroots tournaments in less than five minutes. Players can set up custom tournaments for their communities with programmable payments that are fast and transparent.
Russo acknowledged that the transaction fees on Ethereum-based NFTs are pretty high now and the industry will likely need to move to an alternative that is better. Ethereum transactions also use a lot of energy in terms of computing power. But he still said that Ethereum is still the main point of industry activity and that isn’t likely to end soon.
“Over time, we need to figure out how to make this more realistic and remove the technical barriers,” Russo said. “I don’t see a mass flight off of Ethereum anytime soon.”
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