Published on: 03/03/2022
Enthusiast Gaming, Hut 8 announce partnership on blockchain gaming
Media, gaming and esports company Enthusiast Gaming has announced that they signed a multi-year strategic partnership agreement with digital asset mining company Hut 8. The deal sees Hut 8 as a sponsor for Enthusiast Gaming’s first-person shooter game EV.IO as well as a sponsor for Luminosity Gaming, a top-level esports organisation with 145 million followers on Twitch.
According to the announcement, Enthusiast Gaming and Hut 8 will be working together on blockchain gaming, Web 3.0, NFTs, and cryptocurrency. The deal sees Hut 8 provide infrastructure support for Enthusiast Gaming by hosting them in Hut 8’s data centres.
What was said
“As we consider new opportunities in Web 3.0, the Metaverse, NFTs and cryptocurrency, we’re proud to join a partnership that will really deliver for our creators, communities and fans, and to kick things off with Hut 8 by bringing our flywheel of opportunities to them, through our latest launch from Addicting Games, and as a partner on Luminosity Gaming,” Enthusiast Gaming CEO Adrian Montgomery said.
“With one of the highest inventories of self-mined Bitcoin of any publicly-traded company globally, Hut 8 has established itself as an innovative leader by bridging digital asset mining with the traditional data centre industry and is now serving both traditional high-performance applications and applications in the gaming and blockchain space.”
Enthusiast Gaming is a gaming company well known for its acquisition of League of Legends data visualisation service U.GG, data platform Tabwire LLC, and strategy guide platform Icy Veins, which all took place last year. Enthusiast Gaming has also secured partnerships with platforms such as ESPAT TV, TikTok, and G FUEL.
Speaking on his part Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton said: “as a digital currency miner with data centre infrastructure, we’re ideally positioned to join forces with one of North America’s largest and fastest-growing gaming entertainment companies and generate the unique benefits of this strategic partnership.”
“We’re excited to host Enthusiast Gaming in our data centres and collaborate on new experiences and content that will connect us to their audience of 300 million Gen Z and Millennial viewers, the majority of whom are crypto-savvy.”
Blockchain gaming
It has been predicted that blockchain gaming will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 14.5 percent through 2026 as gamers are becoming more interested in owning digital assets. Blockchain games, also referred to as NFT games or crypto games, are defined as games that implement cryptography-based blockchain technologies. This sometimes includes allowing players to buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrencies and NFTs with other players.
Unlike skins and accessories in games such as League of Legends and CS:GO, which once bought is permanently owned, NFTs and cryptocurrencies bought in blockchain games have resale values. For example, in the action RPG Warframe, users can sell and trade weapon parts that can only be bought with the game’s in-game currency.
One of the first blockchain games is CryptoKitties, where layers collect and breed creatures called CryptoKitties. According to its developer, Dapper Labs, every CryptoKitty is given unique phenotypes and genotypes that dictate its traits and appearances. To unlock new attributes, players can breed their CryptoKitties to create new variations.
Each CryptoKitty is a non-fungible token (NFT), which means they are indivisible and unique. Every CryptoKitty cannot be replicated, stolen, or destroyed and is fully owned by its player.
