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"...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

"...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.
- mikegreenberg 5y ago
  You're missing the point that this would motivate a marketplace where Ubisoft is not the only portal for these NFT-owned games. nftgamingportal.com could exist which accepts these NFTs (in addition to many others) despite whatever restrictions Ubisoft decides to impose (which they are free to do... they own the walled garden).
  - danShumway 5y ago
    > nftgamingportal.com could exist which accepts these NFTs (in addition to many others) despite whatever restrictions Ubisoft decides to impose Ubisoft's coin is on a public chain right now, and they have restrictions that prevent people from using arbitrary 3rd-party marketplaces to trade the NFTs. So it's a nice theory, but it doesn't seem to be working in practice; being on a public chain isn't currently preventing Ubisoft from restricting other portals. I think people believed this portability was inherent to how NFTs work, that of course anything on a public chain would have to allow 3rd-party marketplaces. But I don't see what mechanisms actually exist to force that outcome; I think that's just a hope that people had rather than an inherent technological property of how blockchain contracts work.
    - Paradigma11 5y ago
      Not really hope, but this is one of the biggest value propositions. If your NFTs give more rights/power to the owner they are going to be more attractive and thus more valuable. On the other hand being able to have more restrictive tokens enables smart contracts to comply with regulations. But for gaming NFTs it really destroys any added value/utility which is something i should have expected of Ubisoft.
  - qeternity 5y ago
    No, you’re missing the point. That’s just not how NFTs work. I can create NFTs that cannot be traded on other marketplaces.
- Paradigma11 5y ago
  Its on a public chain: https://tezos.com/ https://tezos.com/ They should be using: https://assets.tqtezos.com/docs/token-contracts/fa2/2-fa2-nft-tutorial/ https://assets.tqtezos.com/docs/token-contracts/fa2/2-fa2-nf... True they could implement arbitrary restrictions.
danShumway 5y ago
People have pointed to the fact that Ubisoft is using a separate chain, but I want to point out that even on Ethereum you're not guaranteed to have the kind of universal access that you want. Smart contracts are code, and an Ethereum contract can be coded to rely on a centralized service or to only allow selling through a specific marketplace. Additionally, even on Ethereum Ubisoft could monitor the sales and reject tokens or ban account that go through sales endpoints that they dislike even if they didn't code the restrictions into the smart contract. The blockchain makes that kind of historical monitoring and restriction really easy. Of course, Ubisoft could in a theoretical world also not do that stuff, but the point is they could also allow you to transfer your games using a centralized service. The NFTs don't force them to be more open or customer friendly, if they were customer friendly they would already be allowing you to download games without DRM or transfer them around. They could already offer you a Steam key with every game you bought from the Ubisoft store; it's corporate politics and competition between Ubisoft and Steam that prevents this from happening, not technology. ---- What Ubisoft demonstrates so well here is that the incentive structure behind NFTs also doesn't really seem bias companies towards being more open. There's no commercial incentive for any other game to integrate with Ubisoft's NFTs. Doing so would be a pure act of charity with no upside to those companies, and with a ton of liability since Ubisoft would be allowed to mess with those NFTs which would now be part of the customer experience on a separate game. What you're seeing with Ubisoft is not going to be an exception, this is going to be the norm of how companies work with NFTs. A quick heuristic you can use: releasing a game DRM-free is easier, cheaper, simpler, and more directly beneficial to consumers than building a consumer-friendly NFT system; so whenever you look at a company that says they're going to work with NFTs, do yourself a favor and check to see if their games are currently DRM-free. Do they currently allow game trading/gifting? If they don't, then I think it's a strong probability that their NFTs are going to look more like Ubisoft's and less like the ethical systems that people imagine and hope for. Because I can't stress enough that it's not hard to build the systems and restrictions on the blockchain that Ubisoft has, it really comes down to corporate choice about how they proceed rather than the technology. In short, NFTs offer no additional positive incentives to be more consumer friendly, and the technology doesn't make anything possible that wasn't possible before with good-old-fashioned OAUTH or signed public databases. If Ubisoft wanted to allow game transfers, there are dozens of ways they could do it today, many of which could survive as authentication mechanisms even if the company folded. Game ownership on the blockchain is not going to go through the kind of revolution that people suppose. My advice is, if you want a revolution in game ownership then lobby to reform copyright and/or establish a legal digital right of resale. If you want to more directly protect your games, boycott and criticize companies like Steam/Epic/Ubisoft/EA/etc that bundle DRM into their storefronts.

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.

mikegreenberg 5y ago
You're missing the point that this would motivate a marketplace where Ubisoft is not the only portal for these NFT-owned games. nftgamingportal.com could exist which accepts these NFTs (in addition to many others) despite whatever restrictions Ubisoft decides to impose (which they are free to do... they own the walled garden).
- danShumway 5y ago
  > nftgamingportal.com could exist which accepts these NFTs (in addition to many others) despite whatever restrictions Ubisoft decides to impose Ubisoft's coin is on a public chain right now, and they have restrictions that prevent people from using arbitrary 3rd-party marketplaces to trade the NFTs. So it's a nice theory, but it doesn't seem to be working in practice; being on a public chain isn't currently preventing Ubisoft from restricting other portals. I think people believed this portability was inherent to how NFTs work, that of course anything on a public chain would have to allow 3rd-party marketplaces. But I don't see what mechanisms actually exist to force that outcome; I think that's just a hope that people had rather than an inherent technological property of how blockchain contracts work.
  - Paradigma11 5y ago
    Not really hope, but this is one of the biggest value propositions. If your NFTs give more rights/power to the owner they are going to be more attractive and thus more valuable. On the other hand being able to have more restrictive tokens enables smart contracts to comply with regulations. But for gaming NFTs it really destroys any added value/utility which is something i should have expected of Ubisoft.
- qeternity 5y ago
  No, you’re missing the point. That’s just not how NFTs work. I can create NFTs that cannot be traded on other marketplaces.
Paradigma11 5y ago
Its on a public chain: https://tezos.com/ https://tezos.com/ They should be using: https://assets.tqtezos.com/docs/token-contracts/fa2/2-fa2-nft-tutorial/ https://assets.tqtezos.com/docs/token-contracts/fa2/2-fa2-nf... True they could implement arbitrary restrictions.

danShumway 5y ago

People have pointed to the fact that Ubisoft is using a separate chain, but I want to point out that even on Ethereum you're not guaranteed to have the kind of universal access that you want. Smart contracts are code, and an Ethereum contract can be coded to rely on a centralized service or to only allow selling through a specific marketplace. Additionally, even on Ethereum Ubisoft could monitor the sales and reject tokens or ban account that go through sales endpoints that they dislike even if they didn't code the restrictions into the smart contract. The blockchain makes that kind of historical monitoring and restriction really easy. Of course, Ubisoft could in a theoretical world also not do that stuff, but the point is they could also allow you to transfer your games using a centralized service. The NFTs don't force them to be more open or customer friendly, if they were customer friendly they would already be allowing you to download games without DRM or transfer them around. They could already offer you a Steam key with every game you bought from the Ubisoft store; it's corporate politics and competition between Ubisoft and Steam that prevents this from happening, not technology. ---- What Ubisoft demonstrates so well here is that the incentive structure behind NFTs also doesn't really seem bias companies towards being more open. There's no commercial incentive for any other game to integrate with Ubisoft's NFTs. Doing so would be a pure act of charity with no upside to those companies, and with a ton of liability since Ubisoft would be allowed to mess with those NFTs which would now be part of the customer experience on a separate game. What you're seeing with Ubisoft is not going to be an exception, this is going to be the norm of how companies work with NFTs. A quick heuristic you can use: releasing a game DRM-free is easier, cheaper, simpler, and more directly beneficial to consumers than building a consumer-friendly NFT system; so whenever you look at a company that says they're going to work with NFTs, do yourself a favor and check to see if their games are currently DRM-free. Do they currently allow game trading/gifting? If they don't, then I think it's a strong probability that their NFTs are going to look more like Ubisoft's and less like the ethical systems that people imagine and hope for. Because I can't stress enough that it's not hard to build the systems and restrictions on the blockchain that Ubisoft has, it really comes down to corporate choice about how they proceed rather than the technology. In short, NFTs offer no additional positive incentives to be more consumer friendly, and the technology doesn't make anything possible that wasn't possible before with good-old-fashioned OAUTH or signed public databases. If Ubisoft wanted to allow game transfers, there are dozens of ways they could do it today, many of which could survive as authentication mechanisms even if the company folded. Game ownership on the blockchain is not going to go through the kind of revolution that people suppose. My advice is, if you want a revolution in game ownership then lobby to reform copyright and/or establish a legal digital right of resale. If you want to more directly protect your games, boycott and criticize companies like Steam/Epic/Ubisoft/EA/etc that bundle DRM into their storefronts.