Pocketful of Quarters Becomes Unity Partner for Blockchain Gaming

Bag full of quarters (POQ) has become one Unit partner to enable developers to implement blockchain technology for games.

The company is certified as a Unity Verified Solution Partner. That means all game developers on Unity now have access to POQ’s software developer kit (SDK), making it easy for them to integrate blockchain technology into their titles.

This means developers can leverage POQ’s token and use it in a wide variety of games. Instead of using assets across games, POQ’s Quarter token allows you to transfer the virtual currency across a number of games.

That is an interesting model for a company that was founded in 2018 by a then 12 year old boy† Yes, George Weiksner and his father Michael co-founded the company and Michael Weiksner is CEO.

“With more than three billion video game players and the metaverse representing an $8 trillion opportunity, investors, players and developers deserve a voice in the future of gaming,” Michael Weiksner said in a statement. “As the largest blockchain project in the world, POQ ushers in a new era of interoperability within games, empowering players and developers to create the future of gameplay and the metaverse we want.”

POQ offers Quarters, the company’s game-agnostic, digital utility token designed solely for gameplay, giving players the freedom and agility to move from one game to another, said Tim Tello, chief operating officer of POQ. , in an interview with SpeelBeat. He considers the token similar to the physical tokens you used to get into shopping arcades to play the machines. It was a way to keep kids in the arcade as long as they had tokens to play, instead of quarters.

“We had the 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 line with regulations because the company has a “letter without actionin 2019 from the Securities and Exchange Commission, meaning the regulatory agency had no intention of suing the company for the way it structured its 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 highly regulated and can only target well-educated investors).

Still, POQ can say that Quarters is a compliant and interoperable video game currency for the metaversethe universe of virtual worlds all connected to each other, as in novels like snow crash and Ready Player One†

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

getting touched

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 got off the ground in 2016 and was founded in 2018. POQ has raised money and has about four years of runway, but won’t say how much. It has just under 40 employees and generated $1 million in revenue last year.

“We are now at the point where we are doing very well. And we have all the support and all the tools that we need, and we can help these game developers make really different things possible,” 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 the “zero clicktransfer technology, which moves the token from one game to another.

“Now that we have the Unity partnership, we have an engineer-less solution that can add blockchain to your game,” says 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 built on Unity. There is one-click authorization.”

How it works

POQ does not use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in games. It is 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 in various games.

“We want to cultivate blockchain onboarding in 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 deployed, where it was traded.”

But the company doesn’t have to worry about privacy compliance because it doesn’t collect any personal information — just purchase and sales history.

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

Developers can simply “bring in” POQ’s SDK to access Quarters in their games, while retaining full control over how they want to deploy Quarters. This includes replenishing their existing currency or replacing their existing currency. Developers who want Quarters to coexist with their own currencies have many options for design and integration at their disposal. As a result, developers are given the flexibility to integrate Quarters to suit their games, business model, and player needs.

Why stores allow it

Since POQ doesn’t go as far as others when it comes to alternative cryptocurrency payments, the Quarters can be used in games that launch on the Apple, Google, and Epic stores. This works for the stores because Quarters prices are always the same. They are not sold with discounts nor do they vary in price on different platforms.

“Our token is very different from most,” Tello said. “It has no face value outside of its economy. It is not a speculative token.”

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

Ultimately, POQ believes it has established a system that benefits developers and players alike.

Tello said this system removes the rate between games. When you go from one game to another, you have to leave your virtual currency behind. Tello said this is a “100% rate”. If you have virtual currency in one version of Call of Duty, you won’t be able to use it for the next Call of Duty next year, he said.

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

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

“We remember the days when one token could play all the machines in the arcade,” he said. “Connecting games to 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 the tokens, they disappear. But when you dive into another game, they’re right there. And that is important for the use case.”

Roblox is a similar example as it has many games on its virtual world platform. Those games use the same Robux currency, which only works within the world and cannot be sold outside the platform.

“But the game industry can’t 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 so we introduced the model that uses blockchain as a service to do that. We can link games together and check their transaction history.”

Players do not know that they are using blockchain. Tello said he is suspicious of the cryptocurrency and NFT-based scammers who try to extort money from people.

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

Tello said he believes the company got 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-game, but you can’t take it outside the game into the real world and convert the token into cash. You can take the token to another game, but not to the real world. this kind of structure avoids problems like money laundering, he said.