Game developer tools outfit Unity Technologies SF today announced a partnership with blockchain company GameCredits Inc. to accelerate the adoption of digital assets in the gaming industry.

The partnership would potentially bring blockchain assets to 3 billion unique mobile devices running Unity-made games and apps. Founded in 2014, the vision of the GameCredits team is to revolutionize game payments with distributed ledger technology, also known as blockchains. This is the same technology that underlies the tradable digital currency bitcoin, which recently exceeded a market valuation of $97 billion.

The company uses its own proprietary blockchain technology to provide the means for game developers to issue their own blockchain-based tokens as currency. This will allow app creators to transact securely and privately with those tokens and make money from apps without the need for a third-party payment processor such as Google LLC or Apple Inc.

“Blockchain solutions will help disintermediate game publishing and give better returns to creators,” said Hubert Larenaudie, president of the Asia-Pacific division of Unity Technologies.

To encourage developers to use the upcoming integration, Unity will give users access to a single-click solution for publishing games to GPlay, the GameCredits mobile gaming store. Games and apps published in the store will also receive higher revenue margins — 90 percent compared with the industry standard of 70 percent — and faster payouts that can happen in under 60 hours compared with 60 days traditionally.

As mentioned above, blockchain technologies provide a protocol to issue currencies, which appear in many games and apps to provide monetization through what’s known as “microtransactions.” With microtransactions, the game apps sell upgrades for players, cosmetic items for in-game avatars and access to content. This monetization method is especially prominent in the mobile gaming industry, and mobile games represented 90 percent of Google Play app revenue in 2016, according to market analyst company App Annie.

Blockchain technology has also been sought after to underly marketplaces for digital items as well as digital currency. Gaming celebrity Jon “Neverdie” Jacobs of Neverdie Studios recently began a project to use a blockchain to create tokens that would allow gamers to receive residual payments for their own in-game activities, like having a job in a game world. Also this year, decentralized marketplace DMarket and digital goods trading platform BLOCKv launched blockchain-based networks for exchanging currency and goods.

By embracing blockchain technology and partnering with Unity, GameCredits Chief Operating Officer Alex Migitko said, “the technology will become mainstream,” given that Unity’s reach extends to a significant portion of the world’s population. “With this partnership, we are introducing digital assets and blockchain to every third person on earth,” he said.

The partnership is expected to have the most immediate impact on the mobile gaming industry, which is expected to exceed $40 billion in global revenue by the end of 2017, up from $30.1 billion in 2015, according to Statistica. According to the same site, 2.8 million apps were available for Android users and 2.2 million could be downloaded from the Apple App store.

Unity Technologies boasts a large number of games and apps that use its development software, with 770 million titles made using its engine. According to the company, approximately 34 percent of the top 1,000 free mobile games are made with Unity tools.

One critical example of the use of Unity’s engine is the extremely popular augmented reality game Pokemon Go, which also supports in-game microtransactions and is thought to have brought in $1.5 million per day via in-app purchases during part of 2016.

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