Who doesn’t want to get paid for playing video games? This series follows mobile applications, some of which are borderline games at best, that claim to reward users with cold hard cash (or gift cards). In my pursuit of extra cash to blow on games, or Steam gift cards to add to my collection, I have tried a number of these applications. I hope my experiences can help others steer clear of the more dubious of these applications.
This time I’ll be taking a look at RollerCoin, a website that advertises itself as an “Online Bitcoin Mining Simulator”. Functionally, this takes the form of playing simple games where you earn virtual “mining power” for completing them. Approximately every five minutes, the site distributes cryptocurrency to its users, split up among all users based off of their respective mining power.
By playing successive games a day, you earn slightly more mining power each time. The power you earn lasts one day initially, but if you play enough games in a single day you get an upgrade virtual “computer”. If you play 10, 30, or 60 games in a single day then your mining power will last 3, 5, or 7 days respectively. You keep these upgrades as long as you play at least one game a day, otherwise it resets back to a single day.
As you can tell from the screenshots above, the site has a moderate amount of advertising on it. After each game, there is also a submission screen where an additional ad will appear. Outside of the site having advertising income, they also sell virtual mining equipment that gives you additional mining power in the game.
There are currently 10 games on the site, most of which are knock-offs of classic games. They also have slots for 5 additional upcoming games, though it is unclear when these are expected to be added. Each game has levels to them. They get increasingly more difficult the more times you play that game and everything resets each day back to level 1.
The site lets you put your virtual mining power into one of three cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Doge coin, and Ethereum. To withdraw from the site, you need to accumulate 360 Doge, 0.004 Ethereum, or 0.0001 Bitcoin. With intermittent, casual playing, and splitting my mining power evenly between the three I have only accumulated only a tiny amount of each currency over 8 weeks.
To be fair, after putting much more time into it shortly before writing this article, doing about 30 games in a day, I’m making almost 1 Doge a day. For anyone unfamiliar with crypto currencies, a single Doge is worth around a fourth of a cent. I have seen some complaints online about having issues trying to withdraw. But, as I have not reached an amount where I can withdraw, I cannot confirm or deny that they pay out.
The games themselves only take a minute or less to complete, though I should note that you can lose them if you run out of time without scoring enough points. The submission screen is mildly annoying to sit through, though at least the ads aren’t pop ups or overlays. Still, for the time put in, it seems unlikely to be a good payout for the time spent.
From what I can find, the site seems to have launched in 2018. It supports English and Chinese, which makes me think it may be based out of China. At the time of this writing, there are 369,030 users listed on the site. A large amount of them appear to be inactive, as getting any mining power moves you around the 20,000th place in mining power. Getting up to 84 Th/s of virtual mining power currently puts me in about 9,000th place.
Overall, I would give RollerCoin a “C-“, or 4.5/10 stars. The games themselves are mildly entertaining, but overall it is a way to kill time more than make money. The hamster mascot for the site is cute, and I do appreciate them throwing a mask on him during the COVID pandemic.
If you want to check out RollerCoin you can visit their site here. They do have a referral program, where you get a bonus amount equal to 1/4th of your referees earned currency. If you want to toss me a referral, feel free to use this link instead.