The legions of League of Legends players can now earn cryptocurrency simply from playing the multi-online battle arena (MOBA) game thanks to an extension of the partnership between the game’s producers Riot Games and Refereum.

It is estimated that over 65 million monthly users will benefit from the integration of the blockchain reward system as they begin to receive Refereum tokens (RFR) by completing games, winning matches and accomplishing in-game achievements.

Industry Expectations

This development had been anticipated for some time by some in the industry, given that a significant portion of League of Legend users had already been earning RFR for streaming, sharing and watching games.

The reward platform has been integrated into the game’s API and, during the beta stage, points earned for playing will be added to a Refereum user’s total balance. At the end of a season, gamers will receive RFR based on how many points they have earned during the entire period.

Dylan Jones, CEO of Refereum, believes “Gamification is happening at all levels of society from behavioural economics, to game theory, neural networks and artificial intelligence…” and as such “…in our ever-connected world, we all matter and we all add value, and we built Refereum to recognise this by fairly sharing rewards.”

With the added intention of shaking up the gaming market by releasing higher profits for developers and content creators, Refereum appear to be adhering to an early pledge of rewarding users who engage with popular gaming content.

Refereum cancelled its public ICO just over a year ago after enjoying a hugely successful pre-sale that netted 40,000 ETH in contributions and, at the time, they justified the decision by expressing a preference for holders of its tokens to be end-users of the platform rather than speculative buyers.