Zebedee Inks Deal With Mobile Game Studio Viker to Add BTC Rewards to Solitaire, Sudoku, Missing Letters

Seven days after the financial technology and bitcoin payments firm Zebedee announced it secured a $35 million capital raise, the company has revealed a new partnership deal with the mobile game studio Viker. The two companies have enhanced three classic video games with Zebedee’s bitcoin reward mechanics which include “Solitaire,” “Sudoku,” and the game “Missing Letters.”

Bitcoin Rewards to Enhance 3 Classic Mobile Video Games

The Square Enix-backed company Zebedee has been making a number of announcements in recent times and last week, the firm announced it raised $35 million from strategic investors. Participating investors in Zebedee’s latest capital raise include Kingsway Capital, Raine Group, Initial Capital, Lakestar, and the Japanese gaming giant Square Enix. On July 26, Zebedee revealed it has inked a new partnership deal with mobile game studio Viker.

Zebedee and Viker have partnered in the past as the bitcoin rewards mechanism has been implemented in games like “Wheel of Trivia,” “Amazeballs,” and “Balls King,” which are available to play on iOS and Android devices. The success behind those games prompted the two companies to integrate BTC payments into classic mobile games that have been popular for the last decade. The three newly enhanced games include “Sudoku,” “Solitaire,” and “Missing Letters,” a game that’s similar to the mobile application “Wordle.”

In mid-April, Zebedee linked up with Fumb Games, the creator of the mobile game “Bitcoin Miner.” When Fumb Games first introduced “Bitcoin Miner,” the game was a virtual mining application with no real rewards except for leveling up the playing experience. After connecting with Zebedee’s technology that leverages BTC’s Lightning Network (LN), “Bitcoin Miner” players can now earn real BTC rewards by playing the game.

During the announcement on Tuesday, Dan Beasley, the co-founder of Viker, said the company is a big believer in play-to-earn (P2E) mechanics in games. “These games are played literally by billions of people, for hundreds of hours over many years,” Beasley said. “But so far, none of them have been able to earn anything for their time. Why continue that, when we’re now in an era where games can reward you with more than just fun?” Beasley continued his statement by adding:

We have the largest play-and-earn portfolio of casual games, with 500k players earning bitcoin every month, while continuously releasing new games and enhancing the experience for our users. We believe Viker can bridge the gap between gaming and crypto, through a seamless journey that enables anyone and everyone to have fun, earn money [and] safely enter the crypto world.

Adding Crypto and NFT Technology to Video Games Has Been a Contentious Subject Among Gamers and Studios

The partnership with Zebedee and Viker follows a slew of gaming companies getting into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and crypto payment rewards. Viker also has NFT technology integrated into some of its games. Square Enix, the video game company that invested in Zebedee, announced on July 21 that the firm would be issuing Final Fantasy NFTs next year.

The day before the Final Fantasy NFT announcement, Mojang Studios, the creator of the best-selling video game worldwide, Minecraft, said that blockchain and NFT technologies are now banned from any of Mojang’s servers. Introducing crypto assets and NFTs into video games has come with mixed reviews from the gaming community as some are for the idea and some are vehemently against it. In addition to Mojang Studios’ decision, last year, the large gaming firms Ubisoft and GSC Game World faced backlash over NFT inclusion.