‘Bitcoin Tycoon’ lets anyone experience the joyless grind of crypto mining

By Jayce Wagner March 6, 2018

Bitcoin Tycoon — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Remember Rollercoaster Tycoon? Imagine a game like that, but instead of building a theme park full of thrilling roller-coasters and awe-inspiring attractions, you decorate a basement and fill it with Bitcoin mining equipment. That is what you get with Bitcoin Tycoon, a tongue-in-cheek Bitcoin mining simulator from independent developer 99 Game Studio.

“The early access version will contain a basic mining system, which includes PC building, hardware store and a mining pool. Later on, we may keep working on hardware, running an exchange website, and cloud mining builds,” the developer states on the game’s Steam page.

In Bitcoin Tycoon, you play as a person who jumped into the cryptocurrency market in early 2014, when things were moving quickly for early investors. The protagonist learns knowledge from “elders” and grows to understand the bitterness behind bitcoin mining, according to the developer’s synopsis on the Steam store. Not only do you get to build a crypto mining setup, but it appears you’ll be able to customize your hardware, and maybe even join different mining pools.

Bitcoin Tycoon 2 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

There is not a lot to go on here, but that is partially because the game is still in Steam Early Access. Very Early Access, it seems.

“Due to some issues with time and cost, we have to publish the early access. We apologize that this game is not well-polished, can only be called playable, but please be kind to an early access game, we are still working on it,” the developer states on the Steam page. “Currently, we are halfway done of the system design. We don’t have a save/load system yet, which is a pain.”

Clearly, the game is in its infancy but could shape up to be a fun look at the sometimes grim realities of industrial-scale Bitcoin mining, especially at its early peak back in 2014. Bitcoin Tycoon is currently in Early Access and it looks like you will be able to get your hands on it in May. Whether or not it will actually teach you enough about crypto mining to give it a go yourself remains to be seen. From what we can tell, it might serve as something of a cautionary tale.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

A staff writer for the Computing section, Jayce covers a little bit of everything -- hardware, gaming, and occasionally VR.

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