Years ago, when games were only available as text quests or pixel-like art, nobody could ever imagine that in-game loot could be traded with other players or sold for real money. And after decades of advancements in the game dev industry and thousands of successful titles released, we have reached a point where pixels are a property, with all its benefits and drawbacks.
Let’s be honest, no in-game loot would turn into an asset if the industry hadn’t shifted to online games. It all started around 30 years ago with big MMO titles like Lineage and Dota 2, allowing thousands of players to raid bosses and collect rare in-game loot together. That was a basis for in-game economies when many players started buying and selling armor, weapons, and even in-game currency from others, trying to monetize their efforts and time. Some even started making a living out of these trades, but because the core audience was teenagers and MMO RPG games were mostly for geeks, the prices and overall volume of sales were relatively small. But with each passing year, there were more and more players with money willing to buy themselves an in-game advantage or simply save a couple of months of their time while still making progress and having top-notch gear.
Fast Forward to Crypto and NFT Era
Players traded in-game assets, making extra income. Some even formed companies involved with trading in-game assets on different servers and games. And things remained the same for all the parties for quite some time before crypto disrupted the industry with NFT technology that made it possible to tokenize any in-game asset and turn it into a token that can be traded on blockchain. And now any skin, a plot of land, or a unique sword is a property and belongs to a person who can sell it or use it as a matter of investment.
Many game development companies started adding support for blockchain into their projects and shifting in-game loot to digital collectibles that can store value and potentially be attractive to collectors and investors. Brands like 777bet started minting their own tokens and distributed them among their players as a reward for various activities and participating in tournaments. That’s how in-game loot started to become transferable outside the original game environment. Such assets started to become just like a real-world property that can be sold, bought, and used as collateral.
First NFTs were minted on the Ethereum blockchain with Immutable X, Polygon, and Solana coming after to provide better scalability and cheaper gas prices – two important basics for better adoption.
Why Game Assets Become Real Crypto?
Computer games already provide a good basis for implementing crypto as they generate lots of rare collectibles and loot during boss raids and limited-time events. Before implementing blockchain, some game assets like badges, medals, or achievements couldn’t be transferred to another player or traded outside the original game environment. But now you can tokenize literally everything and have it as a separate entity on the blockchain to later trade on third-party marketplaces. In such marketplaces there you could buy and sell in-game assets as NFTs were thriving during 2020-21, backed by the hype for NFTs.
NFT technology offered a unique way of storing the value of an asset and transferring it to another game world. In practice, this means that a sword from Game A can be transferred to Game B within a couple of minutes if both games support the same blockchain. The same works for two servers of the same game. Imagine that you move to Europe or Asia and can transfer all your loot and in-game assets to a local server without starting a new character from scratch. How cool is that, right? Although this technology provides a unique set of possibilities for gamers, we still haven’t seen any solid implementation of it in AAA titles. As of 2025, it feels like big game publishers are mostly afraid of losing their control over game loot and collectibles, and do everything to prevent people from making a profit from it.
What’s In It for Players and Developers?
Despite almost no traction for turning game assets into real crypto in 2025, the game industry still sees a lot of potential in blockchain solutions, as it could lead to additional money streams and monetization methods. Companies can simply make more money when they allow trading in-game assets as NFTs based on Solana or any other popular blockchain. Will it happen this year or next year? Nobody knows, but the growing number of transactions on Immutable X that are made specifically for fast and cheap in-game transactions is a big green flag for the bright future of blockchain solutions.
Aside from traditional games that tend to use blockchain, there are Metaverse projects allowing people to own tokenized pieces of land inside a digital universe. There was a huge hype for Decentraland and the MANA token that were hitting headlines of the NYT and major media when companies like Sony and Samsung started to invest in lands there.
Popular brands started to open virtual shops and even sell digital products there for tokens and stablecoins. This has highlighted an interesting post-COVID trend when brands were experimenting with selling goods online without having physical offices or shops, as people were able to see new products in VR as a 3D object. Cutting the expenses of commercial real estate and rent was one of the reasons why brands were interested, but in the very end, the first approach wasn’t really successful. Analytics say that the world wasn’t prepared for this because of the level of adoption of VR devices at that moment. Indeed, back in that period, there were no Apple Vision Pro and Valve Index, while Google VR cardboard is clearly not something that can boost sales for fashion and luxury brands.
Are we about to see NFTs as real crypto till 2030? It is still an open question. But if you are in the brand marketing or game development industry, NFTs and in-game assets tokenization is definitely a thing to keep a closer look at in the upcoming years.