Blockchain Can Solve Gaps Left Behind in Pro Gaming by Net Neutrality

Getting paid to play videogames is an exciting and somewhat recent phenomenon, but before the eSports industry becomes the giant that everyone believes it will amount to one day, the industry needs to move past issues that are impeding its growth, such as net neutrality.

The eSports industry is on pace from being just a couple of years away from reaching the 1 billion dollar mark. In 2017, the industry was worth just shy of $500 million dollars. The audience is also growing for the sport, with forecasts placing the industry at 400 million users this year, to 600 million users in 2020. It is expected that eSports viewers in 2018 will have watched 6.6 billion hours of watching other people play video games.

As this industry matures, it will need to lay down a more stable foundation before it scales to the size it is expected. One way that the industry can improve is by addressing some serious issues with net neutrality.

As I’m sure many of you know, net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites. Many people consider this equivalent to digital free speech for the internet. Over the last decade or so, net neutrality has become a major debate for legislators in countries such as the USA, Brazil and India. Net neutrality presents several challenges to the eSports industry.

One of the biggest challenges is net neutrality may issue data caps. Many gamers and viewers stream their game in high definition for hours on end. This is problematic for internet companies because it clogs the network. As the larger market for viewing gaming increases, this problem will only intensify.

Blockchain delivers the central message of decentralization, which is an important reminder in the face of the danger of only a few companies controlling the internet. Net neutrality promotes the opposite of this, giving advantage to some websites over others. If net neutrality continues to impede blockchain’s growth, the gaming industry’s growth will be slowed too. The only thing that can help this is blockchain itself.

By delivering technology that increases decentralization in all industries that it touches, blockchain encourages industries to not have a concentration of power. The gaming industry will not be any exception.

Coins like Gamegold who are bringing blockchain ecosystems to the gaming world are making professional gaming more flexible. Gamegold is making a universal coin that professional gamers can use across any ecosystem as opposed to only being able to use the coin on the game they earned it on. This means that gamers won’t be limited to the one coin, one video game framework that currently exists.

Moving forward, as blockchain introduces more equally distributed system networks across industries, such as gaming, issues that are thwarting the industry such as net neutrality will be alleviated.