10 ms·

I feel a bit disappointed by the number of people suggesting that an NFT would somehow help here. An NFT is just a fancy signed receipt. I can mint an NFT sayi

by Lazare 5y ago

I feel a bit disappointed by the number of people suggesting that an NFT would somehow help here. An NFT is just a fancy signed receipt. I can mint an NFT saying the OP owns a bunch of Ubisoft games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed. Ubisoft could mint an NFT saying he owns a bunch of games and give it to him, but his account will still be closed. (He probably still has the receipts from when he bought the games in his inbox somewhere, but of course, his account is still closed.) We can store whatever records we like in a fancy distributed database, but his account will still be closed. The only fix here is Ubisoft needs to not close peoples accounts. Somewhat amusingly Ubisoft is in the process of launching an NFT system (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/12/ubisofts-first-nft-plans-make-no-sense/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/12/ubisofts-first-nft-pl...) and as anyone paying attention would no doubt expect, it doesn't solve anything related to this; up to an including the fact that if you get banned you...lose your NFTs. There is no technological problem to solve here.

cinntaile 5y ago
But if he creates a new account and transfers the NFTs (that function as your proof of ownership of a game in this case), then you're good to go again. Since they can't be deleted. It's a different story if your NFTs are banned of course, then it wouldn't matter if you transfer them to a new account.
- Lazare 5y ago
  Ubisoft is already making NFTs (for cosmetics in this case; same tech though) where they control who can own or transfer NFTs. So...no., this doesn't help. Ubisoft doesn't need NFTs to let people transfer their games to a new account, and they don't need to let people transfer their games just because they've given you a fancy commemorative memento of the time you gave them money in exchange for not owning a game.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    You didn't read what I wrote, I'll try and rephrase it. I am talking about NFTs where you as the owner of the NFT control who you can transfer it to, I explicitly mentioned this. If you can do this, then it can be a solution to the current problem. Because then you simply transfer your ownership rights to your new account.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      Ubisoft is under no obligation to honour your transfer of ownership of the NFT. They can just stop accepting it as valid any time they like.
      - cinntaile 5y ago
        This is true. The assumption I make is that we would be living in a scenario where they would honour the ownership transfer. I'm just saying it's possible for NFTs to work like this, not that this will actually happen.
        user-the-name 5y ago
        If you are living under the assumption that they would honour ownership, you don't need NFTs in the first place. The whole thing can be much more efficiently implemented without them.
        acdha 5y ago
        That's the problem, though: if they wanted to allow this, it's easy to do — for example, GOG has a Steam import feature but relatively few publishers allow their content to be used that way. Spending an enormous amount of money switching to NFTs would just be a distraction from the business reasons why those publishers are blocking that capability.
    - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
      If "the current problem" is "how do I, the player, get around this company's ban on my account," sure. But from Ubisoft's perspective, "the current problem" is "we banned this player and want them to stay banned."
- smorgusofborg 5y ago
  I think it would be far more frequent that crackers gain control of NFTs and transfer them to a new account. Are users going to rejoice in the existence of a smart receipt they didn't understand when they are locked out of their purchases and perhaps declared dead on the block chain?
- nkrisc 5y ago
  Why would they ever do that, though? That would allow third party resale of digital copies of their games which would eat away their sales of games. It’s one of the many reasons games are digitally sold now: there’s no physical artifact the owner can sell to someone else. Why would Ubisoft intentionally create a way for homes to be resold without them getting a cut?
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    I don't expect the incumbents, like Ubisoft, to do that. But you can definitely program NFTs to automatically give a cut of the sale each time the NFT is sold. It doesn't make too much sense for second hand digital games, you'll likely be able to buy the games as long as the platform is alive. In a situation such as this one it could have helped resolve it though. It would have been even better if Ubisoft didn't just delete the account, but that's apparently not the world we live in. Hopefully the owner of the deleted account can send in his receipts and get his account back.
    - nkrisc 5y ago
      > It would have been even better if Ubisoft didn't just delete the account Since mistakes or malice can always occur, the real issue is that it isn't easier to seek legal redress. Somewhat tangential to this issue, I still believe it's wrong for these services to use wording and marketing that suggest you "purchase" or "buy" the game, when in reality you have no such ownership claim to the game as you would a similar, analog purchase of physical media or objects. I don't think it's fair that these companies can get away with using misleading language and obscuring the truth in legalese in a 100 page TOS document. The "buy" button on these digital games storefront should say something like "purchase limited license," or at least something a little closer to reality. I don't think it should be possible to "purchase" an online-only game that requires access to the proprietary game servers in order to function. You're renting the game and don't actually own anything.
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
>no technological problem // What about proving ownership, on the balance of probabilities, to show tortuous damages in a court? Seems like a list of receipts that's somehow certified would be beneficial to that end? Probably first we need legislation to make digital purchases resalable, and to require DRM free versions to be made available if a product is EOL-ed. Companies world copyright against the populous who are [in a functioning democracy] the ones who give them the copyright in the first place.
- bob1029 5y ago
  Most financial institutions are required to keep transaction records for 7+ years by law, and you could maintain your own copies indefinitely. I think an Amex statement from 1999 would stand up just fine in court if you had a scanned copy sitting in your Dropbox. Maintaining a list of receipts and transactions is basic finance. This still has not much to do with technology.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  NFT's are not a source of truth. It's an illusion to think that they are, but they aren't. The stolen art that is put on NFT's from artists is still the artists one and not from the NFT creator. Eg. https://opensea.io/DisneyCollectibles https://opensea.io/DisneyCollectibles Ontopic: the company that creates the software/game owns your account, there is literally 0 benefit for them to use a NFT.
  - aledalgrande 5y ago
    Yeah I have been involved in the community and things like Ubisoft making an NFT is 0% utility and 100% money grab. Don't trust gaming companies NFT providing any sort of value to you. Those things are not good for the community.
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    In theory if some kind of token-as-license system were to be used by a game distributor, it would be trivial to confirm that the token contract address (0xff..) matches the contract address required by the distributor. Other tokens may appear similar, but would have a different addressable hash. The same is currently true of the NFT art market: an artist can say "I minted 0xff.." and so a token with hash "0xaa.." is clearly not originating from that artist, despite them having some similar attributes.
user-the-name 5y ago
Exactly. The idea that NFTs somehow help in these kind of situations is utter nonsense. Sure, if Ubisoft minted an NFT and give it to you, they couldn't delete the NFT itself. However, it is always up to Ubisoft or whoever else is using NFTs whether they want to honour that NFT or not. You can present them with the NFT, and they can say "Hmmm... no." An NFT is like a key to a house. You can use it to open the door until the owner of the house decides to change the locks. You still own the key, but that impresses nobody.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  It'll be bad PR if they don't honor it, though. Purchasers of the NFT don't know the original holder got banned, and they have every reason to assume buying the NFT from that person will give them whatever privilege or cosmetic it's supposed to grant them in-game. Enough people don't have that happen and complain about it loudly enough and Ubisoft will feel pressure to change their policies to honor it. It'd be a stupid hill to die on anyway. Granted Ubisoft has done some stupid stuff in the past, but this one I don't think they'd win in the end.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    This is true for any system, not just one based on NFTs. NFTs add nothing here.
  - rowanajmarshall 5y ago
    It's bad PR that they delete inactive account with games at all, but they did it anyway.
    - cableshaft 5y ago
      And according to the article they got pushback, said it was a glitch (his got deleted after a year of inactivity, they claim it's supposed to be four years, and in part to comply with data privacy laws, I'm guessing in the UK as theirs are pretty stringent), and also said they're going to more or less undo it in this instance, meanwhile Steam wasted no time announcing they don't delete inactive accounts ever, gaining some free brownie points and a decent number of people will probably avoid their store in the future so as not to risk this happening. So yeah, I maintain my point that if they offer NFTs, allow owners to sell them to other people (which is kind of the point of NFTs), and then decide certain instances of NFTs don't have to be honored because they banned that person, they're going to get enough articles like this that they'll feel pressure to walk back such an action.
grumbel 5y ago
> but his account will still be closed. That wouldn't be a problem with NFTs as they could just go to another game provider, show their proof-of-ownership and download their games from there. Such import functionality already exist to some limited degree right now with GoG, Steam and Co., but all of them require that your account with Ubisoft is still working. NFTs would work even if Ubisoft disappeared completely. Furthermore NFTs would allow used game sales, something we have lost with the switch from physical to digital, despite it being required by law in many countries. A signed recipe is nowhere good enough, as that still depends on your account at Ubisoft, e.g. to keep track of if you refunded the game or not. Now getting the game industry to actually implement and use an NFT based game-ownership system, that's the tricky part. But claiming there is no technological problem that needs solving is ignoring all the freedoms we lost by going digital with our purchases and that could be regained with NFTs.
- Closi 5y ago
  OPs point is that all of that can be done without the use of NFTs - the reasons Ubisoft are doing this are commercial not because of technical limitations. Just saying NFTs will solve it even if Ubisoft goes rogue completely ignores other things that would need to happen too - ie how do you avoid double redemption and multiple installs?
  - grumbel 5y ago
    How? Which digital sales system still works when the shop I bought it from goes down (as happened with GameStopApp and Desura)? Even DRM-free doesn't work in the modern landscape where games are getting updates years down the road. Trying to sell a DRM-free game, while theoretically allowed, is also not really practical.
    - Closi 5y ago
      If GameStopApp wanted to allow you to transfer them they could have - hence it being commercial rather than technological.
Paradigma11 5y ago
"...up to an including the fact that if you get banned you...lose your NFTs." That cant be right, well Ubisoft could still fuck this up. I can sell my NFTs on marketplaces completely independent of ubisoft. Sure they could invalidate, not honor the NFTs, but i wouldnt expect them to do so unless criminal activity like money laundering is involved.
- Lazare 5y ago
  > I can sell my NFTs on marketplaces completely independent of ubisoft. See the link I posted. As of right now, the stated plan is that you will NOT be able to do so.
  - Paradigma11 5y ago
    I am not sure what to trust less. Ubisoft to not fuck this up or an ars technica NFT article.
- antihero 5y ago
  Not if the NFTs are only minted and valid on their own marketplace/blockchain.
  - Paradigma11 5y ago
    Then its good that they are not minted and valid on their own marketplace/blockchain. https://tezos.com/ https://tezos.com/ https://rankchart.org/site/objkt.com/ https://rankchart.org/site/objkt.com/ https://rarible.com/ https://rarible.com/
- qeternity 5y ago
  > I can sell my NFTs on marketplaces completely independent of ubisoft. Even on a public chain, this isn’t true. It’s shocking to me how many people in this space really don’t know the basics. An NFT is just a contract that implements ERC-721/ERC-1155. I can implement restrictions around the transfer functions however I like.
throwawaycities 5y ago
> An NFT is just a fancy signed receipt. That may be how some NFTs are utilized. But it’s probably better to think of an ERC20 (tokens) and ERC721 (NFTs) as self executing code on the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The difference between the two is that ERC20 standard is self-similar and the ERC721 standard is uniquely identifiable. Sure you can mint an NFT with “whatever record” you want in theory, if the NFT isn’t minted within a given self-executing smart contract, then your NFT is immediately recognizable as bullshit. You are simultaneously suggesting there is no need for a technological solution, the answer if forcing Ubisoft to act a certain way, whereas the technological solution removes the need to trust Ubisoft to act a certain way or force them to when they don’t.
- cedilla 5y ago
  How exactly would the embedded program force Ubisoft to act?
  - throwawaycities 5y ago
    Self-executing programs on EVM would entirely remove the need to force anything, which is OPs “solution”. We have seen it time and again with centralized services right? Just take any one of the horror stories where PayPal has shutdown/frozen accounts. People have been frozen for months/years/indefinitely with funds they need to live and feed their families. You don’t need to force PayPal to unlock you account/funds if you can take your seed phrase/private key and access my funds on any other wallet.
    - cedilla 5y ago
      I understand the frustration with centralized services. What I don't understand is how an embedded program on a blockchain service would guarantee my access to a Ubisoft service or game.
    - acdha 5y ago
      Is the game distributed and executing on the blockchain? If not, you're close to understanding how NFTs very expensively do not solve this problem: the blockchain state doesn't remove Ubisoft's control of their software and servers. What would help is a legal contract with user-friendly terms (which they could offer now if they wanted to, but they don't) or consumer protection regulation (which has no need for a blockchain).
ChildOfChaos 5y ago
NFT's are stupid. It's just the NFT idiots trying to find an actual legitimate reason for them to exist by saying it solves every problem, which it doesn't.
- isoskeles 5y ago
  But supposedly a “correctly implemented” NFT would solve the problem.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    It's one solution to the problem, but it's not the only one.
    - isaiahg 5y ago
      And probably the most complicated solution
      - kirso 5y ago
        "Have fun staying poor"... the most used argument to do something with NFTs. Coming back to the main topic, I would suggest looking into Lateral thinking with withered technology. Nobody cares what technology is used for consumer facing products. Nobody cares if its web1 or web25. What people care about is usefulness and purpose. Cutting-edge tech has always been here, but the break-throughs are mostly coming from cross-pollinating existing tech and remixing something into a better, cheaper, faster version.
- AniseAbyss 5y ago
  Sure but there is a paycheck in it for some of the people who post on HN. Always follow the money.
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
I dunno - when MP3s became thing, in my country you were allowed to convert your CD to MP3. But you need the CD to prove your ownership (technically - I don't know if there ever was a court case where somebody produced the CDs). It seems to me in that sense a NFT could help - you can get the MP3s anywhere, but the NFT proves you actually paid for it. Of course there would have to be a way to get the Ubisoft games, or they would have to play along.
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
  I don't get how this would be even remotely helpful in real life. It's just a solution for a manmade problem. I know there are a lot of manmade problems getting circumvented by code but this time it's just all on us.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    Well you could own digital goods without having to rely on centralized services that can cancel your accounts.
    - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
      I don't think thats feasible in a fiat world.
steelstraw 5y ago
What if it was all on chain? See https://ultra.io https://ultra.io (a Steam competitor) for an example of this: "All the content you buy from Ultra, such as games, DLCs, and virtual items, are on-chain digital goods you truly own. On Ultra you’re in control of your assets as though they were physical items. These assets can be sold, traded and given away to your friends within Ultra, or outside of Ultra, through 3rd party marketplaces and mobile apps."
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bluetonium 5y ago
  Does Ubisoft have to honor that Blockchain though by providing you services in perpetuity? They might if they contractually agreed to honor it. But even if they were inclined to offer such licenses (lets say consumers everywhere demanded it), there's not many meaningful enforcement advantages of shoving NFTs in the mix. As a consumer such a contract could (including transferability) could exist without an NFT, and be just as enforced by the (centralized) judicial system or consumers voting with their feet.
- nemacol 5y ago
  I own a physical copy of Diablo 2 that does not work anymore. License is dead and I don't know why. Owning a physical copy is not helping me play the game as Bliz has decided that license is no good. An NFT could have the same experience. Nothing forcing the vendor to honor it. Seems if NFT game licenses worked the way they are being talked about in this thread then there would be no way to ban players for bad behavior because it would be out of the hands of the developer. Which clearly isn't true.
  - calamityjam 5y ago
    There is a an open implementation that you might be able to use: https://github.com/AbyssEngine/OpenDiablo2 https://github.com/AbyssEngine/OpenDiablo2
  - AniseAbyss 5y ago
giancarlostoro 5y ago
A correctly implemented NFT would mean that he could still sell the game to someone else, he should still be able to take the NFT of his games with him and make a new account theoretically. If they provide no way for him to auto export his NFTs then nobody should bother buying NFTs of games since as you're suggesting, it's pointless.
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
  export nfts? doesn't that make it fungable?
  - bradstewart 5y ago
    I assume "export" here means transfer it to a wallet that the user controls, rather than Ubisoft. You can change ownership of the token without changing the token itself, so its still non-fungible.
    - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
      Their ToS doesn't give me ownership of the nft that would be fraud.
- acdha 5y ago
  How does your correct implementation force Ubisoft to do something against their will? If they want to block someone, opening another account will work only to the extent that they don't really care — otherwise their terms of service would be meaningless since everyone could just crank out sock puppets.
  - tragictrash 5y ago
    That's the whole point, the producer doesn't have control and therefore you own what you bought, instead of renting it.
    - 5y ago

by Lazare 5y ago

cinntaile 5y ago

But if he creates a new account and transfers the NFTs (that function as your proof of ownership of a game in this case), then you're good to go again. Since they can't be deleted. It's a different story if your NFTs are banned of course, then it wouldn't matter if you transfer them to a new account.

Lazare 5y ago
Ubisoft is already making NFTs (for cosmetics in this case; same tech though) where they control who can own or transfer NFTs. So...no., this doesn't help. Ubisoft doesn't need NFTs to let people transfer their games to a new account, and they don't need to let people transfer their games just because they've given you a fancy commemorative memento of the time you gave them money in exchange for not owning a game.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  You didn't read what I wrote, I'll try and rephrase it. I am talking about NFTs where you as the owner of the NFT control who you can transfer it to, I explicitly mentioned this. If you can do this, then it can be a solution to the current problem. Because then you simply transfer your ownership rights to your new account.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    Ubisoft is under no obligation to honour your transfer of ownership of the NFT. They can just stop accepting it as valid any time they like.
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      This is true. The assumption I make is that we would be living in a scenario where they would honour the ownership transfer. I'm just saying it's possible for NFTs to work like this, not that this will actually happen.
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        If you are living under the assumption that they would honour ownership, you don't need NFTs in the first place. The whole thing can be much more efficiently implemented without them.
      - acdha 5y ago
        That's the problem, though: if they wanted to allow this, it's easy to do — for example, GOG has a Steam import feature but relatively few publishers allow their content to be used that way. Spending an enormous amount of money switching to NFTs would just be a distraction from the business reasons why those publishers are blocking that capability.
  - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
    If "the current problem" is "how do I, the player, get around this company's ban on my account," sure. But from Ubisoft's perspective, "the current problem" is "we banned this player and want them to stay banned."
smorgusofborg 5y ago
I think it would be far more frequent that crackers gain control of NFTs and transfer them to a new account. Are users going to rejoice in the existence of a smart receipt they didn't understand when they are locked out of their purchases and perhaps declared dead on the block chain?
nkrisc 5y ago
Why would they ever do that, though? That would allow third party resale of digital copies of their games which would eat away their sales of games. It’s one of the many reasons games are digitally sold now: there’s no physical artifact the owner can sell to someone else. Why would Ubisoft intentionally create a way for homes to be resold without them getting a cut?
- cinntaile 5y ago
  I don't expect the incumbents, like Ubisoft, to do that. But you can definitely program NFTs to automatically give a cut of the sale each time the NFT is sold. It doesn't make too much sense for second hand digital games, you'll likely be able to buy the games as long as the platform is alive. In a situation such as this one it could have helped resolve it though. It would have been even better if Ubisoft didn't just delete the account, but that's apparently not the world we live in. Hopefully the owner of the deleted account can send in his receipts and get his account back.
  - nkrisc 5y ago
    > It would have been even better if Ubisoft didn't just delete the account Since mistakes or malice can always occur, the real issue is that it isn't easier to seek legal redress. Somewhat tangential to this issue, I still believe it's wrong for these services to use wording and marketing that suggest you "purchase" or "buy" the game, when in reality you have no such ownership claim to the game as you would a similar, analog purchase of physical media or objects. I don't think it's fair that these companies can get away with using misleading language and obscuring the truth in legalese in a 100 page TOS document. The "buy" button on these digital games storefront should say something like "purchase limited license," or at least something a little closer to reality. I don't think it should be possible to "purchase" an online-only game that requires access to the proprietary game servers in order to function. You're renting the game and don't actually own anything.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago

>no technological problem // What about proving ownership, on the balance of probabilities, to show tortuous damages in a court? Seems like a list of receipts that's somehow certified would be beneficial to that end? Probably first we need legislation to make digital purchases resalable, and to require DRM free versions to be made available if a product is EOL-ed. Companies world copyright against the populous who are [in a functioning democracy] the ones who give them the copyright in the first place.

bob1029 5y ago
Most financial institutions are required to keep transaction records for 7+ years by law, and you could maintain your own copies indefinitely. I think an Amex statement from 1999 would stand up just fine in court if you had a scanned copy sitting in your Dropbox. Maintaining a list of receipts and transactions is basic finance. This still has not much to do with technology.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
NFT's are not a source of truth. It's an illusion to think that they are, but they aren't. The stolen art that is put on NFT's from artists is still the artists one and not from the NFT creator. Eg. https://opensea.io/DisneyCollectibles https://opensea.io/DisneyCollectibles Ontopic: the company that creates the software/game owns your account, there is literally 0 benefit for them to use a NFT.
- aledalgrande 5y ago
  Yeah I have been involved in the community and things like Ubisoft making an NFT is 0% utility and 100% money grab. Don't trust gaming companies NFT providing any sort of value to you. Those things are not good for the community.
- mattdesl 5y ago
  In theory if some kind of token-as-license system were to be used by a game distributor, it would be trivial to confirm that the token contract address (0xff..) matches the contract address required by the distributor. Other tokens may appear similar, but would have a different addressable hash. The same is currently true of the NFT art market: an artist can say "I minted 0xff.." and so a token with hash "0xaa.." is clearly not originating from that artist, despite them having some similar attributes.

user-the-name 5y ago

Exactly. The idea that NFTs somehow help in these kind of situations is utter nonsense. Sure, if Ubisoft minted an NFT and give it to you, they couldn't delete the NFT itself. However, it is always up to Ubisoft or whoever else is using NFTs whether they want to honour that NFT or not. You can present them with the NFT, and they can say "Hmmm... no." An NFT is like a key to a house. You can use it to open the door until the owner of the house decides to change the locks. You still own the key, but that impresses nobody.

cableshaft 5y ago
It'll be bad PR if they don't honor it, though. Purchasers of the NFT don't know the original holder got banned, and they have every reason to assume buying the NFT from that person will give them whatever privilege or cosmetic it's supposed to grant them in-game. Enough people don't have that happen and complain about it loudly enough and Ubisoft will feel pressure to change their policies to honor it. It'd be a stupid hill to die on anyway. Granted Ubisoft has done some stupid stuff in the past, but this one I don't think they'd win in the end.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  This is true for any system, not just one based on NFTs. NFTs add nothing here.
- rowanajmarshall 5y ago
  It's bad PR that they delete inactive account with games at all, but they did it anyway.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    And according to the article they got pushback, said it was a glitch (his got deleted after a year of inactivity, they claim it's supposed to be four years, and in part to comply with data privacy laws, I'm guessing in the UK as theirs are pretty stringent), and also said they're going to more or less undo it in this instance, meanwhile Steam wasted no time announcing they don't delete inactive accounts ever, gaining some free brownie points and a decent number of people will probably avoid their store in the future so as not to risk this happening. So yeah, I maintain my point that if they offer NFTs, allow owners to sell them to other people (which is kind of the point of NFTs), and then decide certain instances of NFTs don't have to be honored because they banned that person, they're going to get enough articles like this that they'll feel pressure to walk back such an action.

grumbel 5y ago

> but his account will still be closed. That wouldn't be a problem with NFTs as they could just go to another game provider, show their proof-of-ownership and download their games from there. Such import functionality already exist to some limited degree right now with GoG, Steam and Co., but all of them require that your account with Ubisoft is still working. NFTs would work even if Ubisoft disappeared completely. Furthermore NFTs would allow used game sales, something we have lost with the switch from physical to digital, despite it being required by law in many countries. A signed recipe is nowhere good enough, as that still depends on your account at Ubisoft, e.g. to keep track of if you refunded the game or not. Now getting the game industry to actually implement and use an NFT based game-ownership system, that's the tricky part. But claiming there is no technological problem that needs solving is ignoring all the freedoms we lost by going digital with our purchases and that could be regained with NFTs.

Closi 5y ago
OPs point is that all of that can be done without the use of NFTs - the reasons Ubisoft are doing this are commercial not because of technical limitations. Just saying NFTs will solve it even if Ubisoft goes rogue completely ignores other things that would need to happen too - ie how do you avoid double redemption and multiple installs?
- grumbel 5y ago
  How? Which digital sales system still works when the shop I bought it from goes down (as happened with GameStopApp and Desura)? Even DRM-free doesn't work in the modern landscape where games are getting updates years down the road. Trying to sell a DRM-free game, while theoretically allowed, is also not really practical.
  - Closi 5y ago
    If GameStopApp wanted to allow you to transfer them they could have - hence it being commercial rather than technological.

Paradigma11 5y ago

"...up to an including the fact that if you get banned you...lose your NFTs." That cant be right, well Ubisoft could still fuck this up. I can sell my NFTs on marketplaces completely independent of ubisoft. Sure they could invalidate, not honor the NFTs, but i wouldnt expect them to do so unless criminal activity like money laundering is involved.

Lazare 5y ago
> I can sell my NFTs on marketplaces completely independent of ubisoft. See the link I posted. As of right now, the stated plan is that you will NOT be able to do so.
- Paradigma11 5y ago
  I am not sure what to trust less. Ubisoft to not fuck this up or an ars technica NFT article.
antihero 5y ago
Not if the NFTs are only minted and valid on their own marketplace/blockchain.
- Paradigma11 5y ago
  Then its good that they are not minted and valid on their own marketplace/blockchain. https://tezos.com/ https://tezos.com/ https://rankchart.org/site/objkt.com/ https://rankchart.org/site/objkt.com/ https://rarible.com/ https://rarible.com/
qeternity 5y ago
> I can sell my NFTs on marketplaces completely independent of ubisoft. Even on a public chain, this isn’t true. It’s shocking to me how many people in this space really don’t know the basics. An NFT is just a contract that implements ERC-721/ERC-1155. I can implement restrictions around the transfer functions however I like.

throwawaycities 5y ago

> An NFT is just a fancy signed receipt. That may be how some NFTs are utilized. But it’s probably better to think of an ERC20 (tokens) and ERC721 (NFTs) as self executing code on the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The difference between the two is that ERC20 standard is self-similar and the ERC721 standard is uniquely identifiable. Sure you can mint an NFT with “whatever record” you want in theory, if the NFT isn’t minted within a given self-executing smart contract, then your NFT is immediately recognizable as bullshit. You are simultaneously suggesting there is no need for a technological solution, the answer if forcing Ubisoft to act a certain way, whereas the technological solution removes the need to trust Ubisoft to act a certain way or force them to when they don’t.

cedilla 5y ago
How exactly would the embedded program force Ubisoft to act?
- throwawaycities 5y ago
  Self-executing programs on EVM would entirely remove the need to force anything, which is OPs “solution”. We have seen it time and again with centralized services right? Just take any one of the horror stories where PayPal has shutdown/frozen accounts. People have been frozen for months/years/indefinitely with funds they need to live and feed their families. You don’t need to force PayPal to unlock you account/funds if you can take your seed phrase/private key and access my funds on any other wallet.
  - cedilla 5y ago
    I understand the frustration with centralized services. What I don't understand is how an embedded program on a blockchain service would guarantee my access to a Ubisoft service or game.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Is the game distributed and executing on the blockchain? If not, you're close to understanding how NFTs very expensively do not solve this problem: the blockchain state doesn't remove Ubisoft's control of their software and servers. What would help is a legal contract with user-friendly terms (which they could offer now if they wanted to, but they don't) or consumer protection regulation (which has no need for a blockchain).

ChildOfChaos 5y ago

NFT's are stupid. It's just the NFT idiots trying to find an actual legitimate reason for them to exist by saying it solves every problem, which it doesn't.

isoskeles 5y ago
But supposedly a “correctly implemented” NFT would solve the problem.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  It's one solution to the problem, but it's not the only one.
  - isaiahg 5y ago
    And probably the most complicated solution
    - kirso 5y ago
      "Have fun staying poor"... the most used argument to do something with NFTs. Coming back to the main topic, I would suggest looking into Lateral thinking with withered technology. Nobody cares what technology is used for consumer facing products. Nobody cares if its web1 or web25. What people care about is usefulness and purpose. Cutting-edge tech has always been here, but the break-throughs are mostly coming from cross-pollinating existing tech and remixing something into a better, cheaper, faster version.
AniseAbyss 5y ago
Sure but there is a paycheck in it for some of the people who post on HN. Always follow the money.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago

I dunno - when MP3s became thing, in my country you were allowed to convert your CD to MP3. But you need the CD to prove your ownership (technically - I don't know if there ever was a court case where somebody produced the CDs). It seems to me in that sense a NFT could help - you can get the MP3s anywhere, but the NFT proves you actually paid for it. Of course there would have to be a way to get the Ubisoft games, or they would have to play along.

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
I don't get how this would be even remotely helpful in real life. It's just a solution for a manmade problem. I know there are a lot of manmade problems getting circumvented by code but this time it's just all on us.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Well you could own digital goods without having to rely on centralized services that can cancel your accounts.
  - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
    I don't think thats feasible in a fiat world.

steelstraw 5y ago

What if it was all on chain? See https://ultra.io https://ultra.io (a Steam competitor) for an example of this: "All the content you buy from Ultra, such as games, DLCs, and virtual items, are on-chain digital goods you truly own. On Ultra you’re in control of your assets as though they were physical items. These assets can be sold, traded and given away to your friends within Ultra, or outside of Ultra, through 3rd party marketplaces and mobile apps."

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bluetonium 5y ago
Does Ubisoft have to honor that Blockchain though by providing you services in perpetuity? They might if they contractually agreed to honor it. But even if they were inclined to offer such licenses (lets say consumers everywhere demanded it), there's not many meaningful enforcement advantages of shoving NFTs in the mix. As a consumer such a contract could (including transferability) could exist without an NFT, and be just as enforced by the (centralized) judicial system or consumers voting with their feet.
nemacol 5y ago
I own a physical copy of Diablo 2 that does not work anymore. License is dead and I don't know why. Owning a physical copy is not helping me play the game as Bliz has decided that license is no good. An NFT could have the same experience. Nothing forcing the vendor to honor it. Seems if NFT game licenses worked the way they are being talked about in this thread then there would be no way to ban players for bad behavior because it would be out of the hands of the developer. Which clearly isn't true.
- calamityjam 5y ago
  There is a an open implementation that you might be able to use: https://github.com/AbyssEngine/OpenDiablo2 https://github.com/AbyssEngine/OpenDiablo2
- AniseAbyss 5y ago

giancarlostoro 5y ago

A correctly implemented NFT would mean that he could still sell the game to someone else, he should still be able to take the NFT of his games with him and make a new account theoretically. If they provide no way for him to auto export his NFTs then nobody should bother buying NFTs of games since as you're suggesting, it's pointless.

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
export nfts? doesn't that make it fungable?
- bradstewart 5y ago
  I assume "export" here means transfer it to a wallet that the user controls, rather than Ubisoft. You can change ownership of the token without changing the token itself, so its still non-fungible.
  - YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
    Their ToS doesn't give me ownership of the nft that would be fraud.
acdha 5y ago
How does your correct implementation force Ubisoft to do something against their will? If they want to block someone, opening another account will work only to the extent that they don't really care — otherwise their terms of service would be meaningless since everyone could just crank out sock puppets.
- tragictrash 5y ago
  That's the whole point, the producer doesn't have control and therefore you own what you bought, instead of renting it.
  - 5y ago