Tencent Patent Wants Players To ‘Pass Down Fortnite V-Bucks After Death’
Tencent is a company well-known, in all honesty, for its monopoly on the gaming industry. With its fingers in League of Legends, Call of Duty, and PUBG among countless others, chances are if you’ve played a AAA title recently, there’s a high probability that a build of the game has passed through Tencent. And goodness, are the company better off for it.
Tencent is an incredibly lucrative company, and its focus on revenue has kept them one of the leading companies in the industry. And now, it looks like they’re focussing on your in-game currencies. More specifically, what will happen to them when you’ve died. Cheery!
Tencent Are Thinking About Your Death
Click to enlargeTencent has recently obtained a patent that is connected to “digital asset inheritance”, meaning that it’s highly likely they’re working on a system that will pass down your in-game items and currency when you’ve kicked the bucket. The patent was filed originally in 2019, and has only just been officially secured by the company this month.
Digital items will be able to be passed down to one’s next of kin if specified in a will, allowing for a transfer of digital currencies and items which, to be fair, can be remarkably valuable.
On a technical level this is a smart move, as when you consider the prices of the likes of weapon skins in CS:GO or the rarity of some skins in Fortnite or Apex Legends, it’s fair to assume that they might become valuable enough to warrant the wish to pass them down after death. But it’s incredibly hard to shift the image of some time in the future, someone’s inheritance could be entirely in the form of V-Bucks, dishing the in-game currency to one lucky (or unlucky, if you don’t play much Fortnite) recipient.
It’s a strange patent to have to file, but at the end of the day, it could become an essential one. That still doesn’t make it less weird that Tencent is preparing for our expirations, though.
