04 Jan 2014 / TechCrunch – Gaming giant Zynga has started to accept the cryptocurrency as a payment option for those buying tokens for virtual goods on the web versions of FarmVille 2, CastleVille, ChefVille, CoasterVille, Hidden Chronicles, Hidden Shadows and CityVille. It makes Zynga the first major gaming company to accept Bitcoin.
Zynga posted the news first on Reddit rather than release an official announcement. It is calling this a “test” being run in partnership with BitPay — the startup backed by the likes of the Founders Fund and Li Ka-shing that is vying to be the “PayPal of the Bitcoin world.”
“We wanted to share with the r/bitcoin community that Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA) is now conducting a Bitcoin test with BitPay (https://bitpay.com/), a leading Bitcoin service provider, in select Zynga.com web games,” Zynga wrote in a post on Reddit.
“In response to Bitcoin’s rise in popularity around the world, Zynga, with help from BitPay, is testing expanded payment options for players to make in-game purchases using Bitcoin. The Bitcoin test is only available to Zynga.com players playing FarmVille 2, CastleVille, ChefVille, CoasterVille, Hidden Chronicles, Hidden Shadows and CityVille. The games can be accessed at http://zynga.com.
“Zynga is always working to improve our customer experience by incorporating player feedback into our games. We look forward to hearing from our players about the Bitcoin test so we can continue in our efforts to provide the best possible gaming experience.”
We have tried buying tokens for the games ourselves and confirm that Bitcoin is coming up as an option in the UK — meaning that it’s likely that this is a global rollout.
We have reached out to Zynga to ask whether it plans to extend this to other games — namely those on mobile and its real-money gambling effort, currently live in the UK.
On the mobile front, considering that Zynga has a huge business on iOS devices, extending Bitcoin acceptance there could prove problematic, considering that Apple has recently shown that it does not support Bitcoin transactions.
Up to now, Bitcoin has not made much headway in the world of gaming, although it is seeing some traction in online gambling, where one Bitcoin-wielding player netted a $1.3 million win on one Bitcoin-based gambling site….. Read more
