Hey there,
We were discussing options to have players earn steem directly through playing, but in the end, we discovered that is pretty much impossible in a real-time game as the blockchain (and not only the Steem blockchain but all blockchains) are just too slow for real-time games where a 100 ms lag can cause you to lose.

So the blockchain connection will be used for sure in the auction house, where a bit of lag will not really be a problem. We are looking into a few other avenues to use it as well, but we don't want to promise anything there, because we first have to see whether they will be viable.