It’s every gamer’s dream to get paid for playing video games. And, with the rise of eSports and online streaming, many players have been able to earn an income for their efforts on their gaming laptop. The truth is, though, that unless you put in a lot of time to become pro or build up a Twitch following then you’re not going to see a meaningful return—until now!

BUFF is a new blockchain-based loyalty program for gamers that aims to reward players in cryptocurrency simply for playing their favourite games. To do so, the Israel-based startup has teamed up with Overwolf—an open sourced app store that enables new features, such as stats tracking, to be added to games via overlays. The platform will track your gameplay and reward you in BUFF coins accordingly.

“The more you play, the more you earn,” BUFF CEO Elay De Beer explained to me in an email. “It’s a loyalty program for gamers on top of blockchain that allows gamers to earn something.”

The platform makes it possible to anyone to earn some income from playing games. Image: BUFF

The Pew Research Center recently found that as many as 6/10 millennials routinely play video games, and those numbers only increase as the user’s age decreases. So, with the gaming industry showing no signs of slowing down, BUFF brings an interesting new perspective via cryptocurrency—the two communities seem to be a natural fit.

Besides generally attracting tech-savvy enthusiasts on both sides, there are obvious reasons why the crypto community and gaming community go hand in hand. For gamers, the concept of a new digital form of currency is nothing new; many online games feature some form of virtual currency that’s earned by playing or sometimes by depositing fiat cash.

However, these in-game currencies are limited to a specific game or platform and can only be used to purchase content within those specific games or platforms. By acting as a cross-platform in-game currency, BUFF coins are different; they can be earned in one game and used in another.

The earn-while-you-game platform currently supports four games: CS:GO, Fortnite, DOTA 2 and League of Legends. However, support for more games is coming soon.

BUFF has quite a few games in the pipeline. The platform also aims to support some sim racing titles (not shown here) in the future. Image: Screenshot from BUFF website

For regular readers of ADAPT, you’ll know that I’m an avid sim racer so I asked De Beer if the platform will support any sim racing titles in the future. He said that this was in the pipeline, but I’m not sure which titles will be added (fingers crossed for iRacing and Assetto Corsa).

De Beer also confirmed that the team plans to add an option for players to exchange their BUFF coins for other cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin) or fiat in the future.

Head over to the BUFF website to find out more and get started by downloading the platform. You can also use our code on signup to get a few bonuses.

Bonus code: 9vjyEFv2g

BUFF website: https://buff.game

Let us know what games you would like added to the BUFF platform in the comments below and we’ll pass them along to the team.

UPDATE: We’ve received a number of questions asking about how BUFF works and how the company makes money, so I reached out to Elay for clarification.

He explained that the BUFF app does not use your machine to mine BUFF coins through Proof of Work (PoW). Instead, the BUFF blockchain achieves consensus through an innovative Proof of Play (PoP) model, which is a customised Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) mechanism. More information on this can be found in the project whitepaper, but the takeaway is that your GPU is not doing extra work to mine the cryptocurrency.

He also confirmed that the app only collects anonymous data related to your gameplay in order to determine the number of BUFF coins allocated and that this data is not sold or shared with any third party.

In order to earn a revenue, therefore, the BUFF app has a small space to display advertisements.

Featured image: BUFF