Pocketful of Quarters becomes Unity partner for blockchain games

Pocketful of Quarters (POQ) has become a Unity partner to enable developers to implement blockchain technology for gaming.

The company received certification as a Unity Verified Solution Partner. This means that all game developers at Unity will now have access to POQ’s Software Developer Kit (SDK), so they can easily integrate blockchain technology into their titles.

This means that developers can use POQ’s token and use it across a wide range of games. Instead of taking assets across games, you can use the POQ Quarter Token to take the virtual currency across a bunch of games.

It is an interesting model for a company that was started in 2018 by a then 12 year old boy. Yep, George Weiksner and his father Michael founded the company, and Michael Weiksner is the CEO.

“With over three billion video game players and the meta-verse representing a $ 8 trillion opportunity, investors, gamers and developers deserve to say something about the games of the future,” Michael Weiksner said in a statement. “As the largest blockchain project in the world, POQ ushers in a new era of game interoperability, giving gamers and developers the opportunity to create the future of gameplay and meta-verse we want.”

POQ offers Quarters, the company’s gaming agnostic digital tool token designed for the sole purpose of gaming that gives players the freedom and agility to move from one game to another, said Tim Tello, POQ Chief Operating Officer, in an interview with GamesBeat . He thinks of the token as similar to the physical tokens you used to get at malls to play on the slot machines. It was a way to keep the kids in the arcade as long as they had tokens to play, instead of blocks.

“We had an idea to change token fragmentation. There are too many games out there, but none of them share tokens,” Tello said.

POQ can say that this is in accordance with the regulations because the company received a “no-action letter” in 2019 from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which means that the regulatory agency had no plans to sue the company for the way it structured the video game currency. IMVU also received such a letter. This means that POQ can legally sell its Quarters tokens to consumers without registering them as securities (which are heavily regulated and can only be targeted at educated investors).

Nevertheless, POQ can say that Quarters is a compatible and interoperable video game currency for the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, as in novels such as Snow crash and Ready Player One.

Ultimately, POQ wants the token to move seamlessly along with assets between games. It wants players to use them across hundreds of game titles and genres.

Gets traction

The company’s investors and advisors include Tim Draper (Draper Associates), Michelle Phan (co-founder of Ipsy) and Chris Cross (formerly of Blizzard Entertainment). The company started in 2016 and was incorporated in 2018. POQ has raised money, and it has about four years of runway, but that does not mean how much. It has just under 40 employees and generated $ 1 million in revenue last year.

“We are at the point now, where we are doing very well. “We have all the support and tools we need, and we’re able to really help these game developers make different things happen,” said Tello.

Tello said there are games with two million users using the token, thanks to the help of Phan, one of the advisors. And Tello said the company has a patent on “zero-click” transfer technology, which moves the token from one game to another.

“Now that we have the Unity partnership, we have an engineered solution that can add blockchain to your game,” said Tello. “We work with a number of compatible chains, and we help you get a grant from a blockchain. It’s literally just a plug-and-play for the building on Unity. It’s a one-click authorization.”

How it works

POQ does not use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in games. It’s just a blockchain based token, and the token prices are the same. On the other hand, Ready Games has created NFT-based tokens that can be used across a variety of games.

“We want to grow the introduction of blockchain to video games,” he said. “If you were to implement blockchain, I can tell you exactly when a token was minted, where it was used, where it was distributed, where it was executed.”

But the company does not have to worry about compliance with privacy laws because it does not collect any personal information – only the purchase and sale history.

The cross-platform currency, which has no economic value, gives developers greater flexibility in how to build, distribute, monetize and cross-market games, and ultimately enable them to create rich, new multiplayer experiences without lose creative and financial control to publishers, Tello said.

Developers can easily “drop in” the POQs SDK to access Quarters in their games, while still having full control over how they distribute Quarters. This includes supplementing their existing currency or replacing their existing currency. Developers who want Quarters to coexist with their native currency have many options available to them for design and integration. As a result, developers have the flexibility to integrate Quarters to suit their games, business model and player needs.

Why stores allow it

Because POQ does not go as far as others do when it comes to alternative cryptocurrency payments, Quarters can be used in games launched in the Apple, Google and Epic stores. This works for the stores because the quarterly prices are always the same. They are not sold at discounts, nor do they vary in price on different platforms.

“Our token is a lot different than most,” Tello said. “It has no face value outside the economy. It is not a speculative sign. “

This means that Quarters is not a cryptocurrency, even though it uses blockchain technology. Quarters are more like a utility symbol. POQ has created its own token, but it has also created a white label solution that gaming companies can use as their own. All games that use the token are interoperable.

Ultimately, POQ believes that they have set up a system where both developers and players benefit from it.

Tello said that this system removes the tariff that exists between games. If you go from one game to another, you will have to leave your virtual currency. Tello said it is a “100% tariff.” If you have virtual currency in one version of Call of Duty, you can’t use it next year for the next Call of Duty, he said.

“We are very different from everyone else because we want to give the power back to the players,” said Tello.

With POQ, companies using the Quarters token can establish marketing alliances that can generate customers for each other. So far, 60 video game companies have signed up to participate. Tello expects them to be launched within the next year. One of the rules is that POQ does not allow its customers to add cryptocurrency to their games in addition to Quarters.

“We remember the days when one token could play all the slot machines in the arcade,” he said. “Connecting games with the same token is the challenge. What you can do now is use the blockchain to connect your game to 100 different games. When you use tokens, they disappear. But when you enter another game, they are there immediately. And that is important for the use case. “

Roblox is a similar example, since it has many games inside its virtual world platform. These games use the same Robux currency, which only works in the world and cannot be sold off the platform.

“But the gaming industry cannot be limited to one app and one engine,” Tello said. “You have to be able to have Unity and more. You must be able to build on any platform. And then we’ve introduced the model that uses blockchain as a service to do that. We can link games together and revise their transaction history. “

Players do not know they are using blockchain. Tello said he is suspicious of cryptocurrency and NFT-based scammers who try to trick people out of their money.

“I want games to be fun. I love video games, since I’ve been building them for a long time. I want games to get better, Tello said.

Tello said he believes the company received the letter without action because it approached the SEC to understand compliance, and it also said there would be no face value for the token. You can buy it in the game, but you can not take it outside the game to the real world and convert the token into cash. You can take the token to another game, but not to the real world. This type of structure avoids problems such as money laundering, he said.