Error: Elder Orb is a blockchain game that is somehow allowed on Steam
Third-party MOBA Error: Oldest Orb goes free to play, and the new financial system includes blockchain technology. But due to a technical detail, the game is still on Steam, despite Valve’s insistence that no blockchain-based games would be allowed on the platform.
How to do Error: Oldest Orb has blockchain technology and still on Steam?
Back in October 2021, Valve banned cryptocurrency games from Steam, with the wording specifically banning “applications based on blockchain technology that issues or allows the exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs”. Despite this ban, it seems Error: Oldest Orb, a MOBA that makes the transition to free play, is back on Steam. In an update that describes the changes that come to the game as a result of its free-to-play feature, Error: Oldest Orb outlines its new partnership with an organization called Pocketful of Quarters, which runs an “interoperable gaming token” called Quarters. This token operates on the Klaytn blockchain, and according to PoQ, it can be compared to Chuck E. Cheese tokens, which you can use for games, but not for anything else. Connecting your Error: Oldest Orb PoQ account allows you to earn quarters in the game and use them in both Error and other games that support them.
Technically, Quarters does not count as a full-fledged cryptocurrency for a couple of reasons. First, quarters by themselves cannot be sold by players for real money (although of course they can be cashed in by developers who use the system), so Error: Oldest Orb does not allow technical “exchange of cryptocurrencies”. Second, Quarters is part of a two-part cryptosystem: it is the “tool”, with its own Q2 token that acts as the “investment token” that can be bought and sold for real money. Q2 investors receive a share of all Quarters sales, so the two are closely linked, but they are technically separate currencies. All this means that Quarters technically does not count as a cryptocurrency. They are also “completely optional”, according to Strange Matter Studios, so they do not break Valve’s insistence that games are not “built on blockchain technology”.
However, there are a few issues with this. Although the blockchain technology in Error: Oldest Orb may be optional, there is still a lot there, and it sails dangerously close to breaking Valve’s guidelines. It’s also the fact that Quarters can be paid for real prizes such as gift cards, technology and even game consoles. Given that you can exchange quarters for gift cards, the leap required to think of them as actual currency is not too great. Still, the fact is that Quarters themselves are technically unable to be sold by players to each other, so they are not strictly a cryptocurrency (although their investment counterpart, Q2, certainly is). Interestingly, the Github page for Quarters explicitly refers to the token as a cryptocurrency, and the White Paper for Quarters strongly refers to cryptocurrency status more than once. We’ll just have to wait and see what Valve intends to do with it Error: Oldest Orb.
Games and cryptocurrencies often do not look eye to eye
Valve has good reason to ban cryptocurrency-based games from Steam. Cryptocurrency is something of a dirty word in the gaming industry right now; it has led to a review of bombs for developers bought by crypto companies, and the monstrous ecological impact of cryptocurrency mining has put many eco-friendly players against it (and rightly so). NFTs, which also form part of the Web3 world alongside cryptocurrency, have been condemned by developers and condemned by digital distributors as well. It is safe to say that although there are certainly high-profile pockets in the industry that go all-in on crypto and NFT mania, it is not something the vast majority of gaming audiences seem to be interested in right now.
Despite the justifiable wave of hatred and cynicism directed at NFTs and cryptocurrencies, there are undoubtedly some good uses for this technology. Recently, for example. No man’s heaven players created a cryptocurrency that does not suck by running it on a test chain, ensuring that it can never actually make real money and that the value is entirely based on the players who use it. It can be tempting to think about Error: Oldest Orb‘s Quarters in this way too, but the presence of a separate investor token and the ability to buy real goods with currency sour that something.
Of course, Pocketful of Quarters is firm in not breaking any rules; the company told us that “Quarters is not a cryptocurrency, and as such, Quarters falls under the same guidelines as any in-app currency” (although their own Github would disagree about the cryptocurrency). Error: Oldest Orb has been reviewed by Steam, as well as the Epic Games Store, and has passed the review, so obviously Valve’s rules are not broken here (or maybe the company just does not look hard enough). Valve did not respond to our request for comment on this story.
