10 ms·

One of those rare instances where I think NFTs and having digital copies available for all to download might make infinitely more sense than buying into central

One of those rare instances where I think NFTs and having digital copies available for all to download might make infinitely more sense than buying into centralized gaming platforms with their own licenses.

IntelMiner 4y ago
How would NFT's help? If the company refuses to refund you, your digital "receipt" is worthless
- kinakomochidayo 4y ago
  If the game is able to connect to your wallet and confirm internally that you own the game’s token, it could unlock the game without having to rely on a server.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Who's running the server that actually runs the game?
    - kinakomochidayo 4y ago
      The idea would work for single player games, where all the content is in the executable, but yeah, multiplayer is another story.
      - yyyk 4y ago
        It won't necessarily work for single-player games, since it's trivial to build a game so that it requires a connection to an external server (put in some API with game logic there. Make sure logic isn't easily reversed engineered). Of course, a game company could always make a game which was built to run locally. It's all the company's choice regardless of NFTs, which are as useless as always.
  - yreg 4y ago
    Sounds interesting, but isn't there an issue that 10 friends could hold a key to the same wallet and all play all the same games, even simultaneously while purchasing just one copy?
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      I'm guessing implementing this would require some sort of known-file-type attestation distributed app. I.e. I prove I have a token + link that token to a hash of my current system(s) It's actually one of the better uses for blockchain I've heard so far, given the data sizes are minimal...
      - staticman2 4y ago
        Who is going to maintain this distributed app, and what incentive do they have not to change the code so every game is reported as owned by everyone?
  - IntelMiner 4y ago
    Then can you just duplicate the wallet and you've "pirated" the game Ah but we'll put it on the blockchain! ...Which is quite literally re-inventing a worse version of systems like Steam
    - kinakomochidayo 4y ago
      Sure I guess, if you want to share private keys with friends.
      - IntelMiner 4y ago
        Why not just make a separate wallet per-game? You've then effectively duplicated serial keys :)
ranger207 4y ago
To get the inevitable question out of the way immediately: how do NFTs help? They're just receipts of purchase, not the purchase itself. If you're saying that someone else would honor the receipt of a different store... why?
- literalAardvark 4y ago
  I guess in the same way you can currently link Steam to GeForce Now and be allowed to play your game. But steezier!
dangerlibrary 4y ago
Oh you sweet, summer child. That is not how gaming NFTs are going to work. They are not going to be consumer-friendly transferable assets. They are going to be vendor-locked, and they will only get invested in if they increase the bottom line of the walled garden that produces them.
- thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
  This is correct. Reason: it's already technically possible to transfer games between platforms, the reason it's not done is financial, legal and political. NFTs create a new method for the technical axis but do nothing to change the others.
miniBill 4y ago
NFTs would not help. Like. At all. Otoh digital copies for download would
- kinakomochidayo 4y ago
  NFTs would replace DRM, so it would, in order to actually play the game.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    How does one replace DRM with NFTs if the game is locally loaded?
    - kinakomochidayo 4y ago
      Have an interface that interacts with MetaMask or WalletConnect within the game.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        What I mean is: the point of DRM is to regulate play of the game whether a person has rights to run the software to play it. How do NFTs help if I have the binaries on my machine and can just patch the check for NFTs to always return "Yes this user is authorized?"
        kinakomochidayo 4y ago
        You can patch the check with binaries? Wouldn’t you need to modify the source and build? I’m not familiar enough with tampering, cracking software like that so I can’t really say.
        shadowgovt 4y ago
        No problem. So in general: yes, it's not always trivial to crack a locally-hosted binary but it's generally possible. It can often be done by actually modifying the binary itself (it's just machine code; if, for example, the entire check is evaluated by one "Call out to the server to find out if we're authorized" function that returns a boolean, you can just replace the first few bytes in its machine code with "LDA $FF # true ; RETURN" and the function will think you're always registered. If it's more complicated, you could maybe run a proxy server locally that pretends to be the check server and always returns "authorized" for the query. Assuming everyone's playing by the rules, I can see how an NFT could be used to indicate when someone has an ownership license to play a game (but not the mechanics of how that right would be enforced were someone to patch their local copy to just ignore the rights check). If the game is cloud-hosted, this is easier to enforce.
benlivengood 4y ago
The easy solution is Good Old Games. Download the installers and archive them wherever you want. NFTs are a red herring for this use case.
- zepppotemkin 4y ago
  Or just offer steam keys
  - meroes 4y ago
    Even Steam revokes paid for content, which I think is the issue being discussed. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1148174213 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=11481...
    - vultour 4y ago
      Not sure how this link proves the point you're trying to make. I can in fact still download all the games that no longer have a page on the Steam store.
      - meroes 4y ago
        Sorry for the late reply. Dungeon Siege 1 had an expansion pack called Legends of Arranna which was sold as a bundle at first on Steam. Sometimes later LoR was removed from everyone's library leaving only the base game. You can download/pirate LoR and apply a steam fix, but as far as I'm aware, you either have to pay or pirate for LoR. The link is "grey" legally AFAICT (pirated but nigh-abandoned)
      - bombcar 4y ago
        There’s at least one game steam pulled from purchase history because it was completely unusable when the servers and auth servers shut down.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jayd16 4y ago
Nah, NFTs don't quite fit the bill. They can act as receipts but they're not good for hosting the product. I think the spirit of your desire is valid though. What I want to see is the invention of some kind of digital legal-trust structure. In theory, SAAS providers could produce some kind of "serverless" way to run their SAAS. Trusted cloud providers could host the SAAS past the lifetime of the original company. Users would need to pay for the hosting but the service can live longer than the company given there was a desire. Legally things could be structured such that this works for closed source SAAS such that it remains closed source. It hits the niche for when just open sourcing the product on the way out isn't feasible.
- yreg 4y ago
  If the receipt part is solved then torrent is enough for hosting installation files, no?
  - jayd16 4y ago
    If you can torrent, then why bother with the receipt?
    - kinakomochidayo 4y ago
      Because developers will want to make the game content only accessible to buyers who have the receipt
      - jayd16 4y ago
        If the devs have servers to validate authorization anyway, then NFTs are unnecessary. Were also discussing the case where the devs go under and no longer provide such a service. Asking clients to check their own NFTs is very weak DRM. So what is the actual proposed flow?
yreg 4y ago

IntelMiner 4y ago

How would NFT's help? If the company refuses to refund you, your digital "receipt" is worthless

kinakomochidayo 4y ago
If the game is able to connect to your wallet and confirm internally that you own the game’s token, it could unlock the game without having to rely on a server.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Who's running the server that actually runs the game?
  - kinakomochidayo 4y ago
    The idea would work for single player games, where all the content is in the executable, but yeah, multiplayer is another story.
    - yyyk 4y ago
      It won't necessarily work for single-player games, since it's trivial to build a game so that it requires a connection to an external server (put in some API with game logic there. Make sure logic isn't easily reversed engineered). Of course, a game company could always make a game which was built to run locally. It's all the company's choice regardless of NFTs, which are as useless as always.
- yreg 4y ago
  Sounds interesting, but isn't there an issue that 10 friends could hold a key to the same wallet and all play all the same games, even simultaneously while purchasing just one copy?
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    I'm guessing implementing this would require some sort of known-file-type attestation distributed app. I.e. I prove I have a token + link that token to a hash of my current system(s) It's actually one of the better uses for blockchain I've heard so far, given the data sizes are minimal...
    - staticman2 4y ago
      Who is going to maintain this distributed app, and what incentive do they have not to change the code so every game is reported as owned by everyone?
- IntelMiner 4y ago
  Then can you just duplicate the wallet and you've "pirated" the game Ah but we'll put it on the blockchain! ...Which is quite literally re-inventing a worse version of systems like Steam
  - kinakomochidayo 4y ago
    Sure I guess, if you want to share private keys with friends.
    - IntelMiner 4y ago
      Why not just make a separate wallet per-game? You've then effectively duplicated serial keys :)

ranger207 4y ago

To get the inevitable question out of the way immediately: how do NFTs help? They're just receipts of purchase, not the purchase itself. If you're saying that someone else would honor the receipt of a different store... why?

literalAardvark 4y ago
I guess in the same way you can currently link Steam to GeForce Now and be allowed to play your game. But steezier!

dangerlibrary 4y ago

Oh you sweet, summer child. That is not how gaming NFTs are going to work. They are not going to be consumer-friendly transferable assets. They are going to be vendor-locked, and they will only get invested in if they increase the bottom line of the walled garden that produces them.

thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
This is correct. Reason: it's already technically possible to transfer games between platforms, the reason it's not done is financial, legal and political. NFTs create a new method for the technical axis but do nothing to change the others.

miniBill 4y ago

NFTs would not help. Like. At all. Otoh digital copies for download would

kinakomochidayo 4y ago
NFTs would replace DRM, so it would, in order to actually play the game.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  How does one replace DRM with NFTs if the game is locally loaded?
  - kinakomochidayo 4y ago
    Have an interface that interacts with MetaMask or WalletConnect within the game.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      What I mean is: the point of DRM is to regulate play of the game whether a person has rights to run the software to play it. How do NFTs help if I have the binaries on my machine and can just patch the check for NFTs to always return "Yes this user is authorized?"
      - kinakomochidayo 4y ago
        You can patch the check with binaries? Wouldn’t you need to modify the source and build? I’m not familiar enough with tampering, cracking software like that so I can’t really say.
        shadowgovt 4y ago
        No problem. So in general: yes, it's not always trivial to crack a locally-hosted binary but it's generally possible. It can often be done by actually modifying the binary itself (it's just machine code; if, for example, the entire check is evaluated by one "Call out to the server to find out if we're authorized" function that returns a boolean, you can just replace the first few bytes in its machine code with "LDA $FF # true ; RETURN" and the function will think you're always registered. If it's more complicated, you could maybe run a proxy server locally that pretends to be the check server and always returns "authorized" for the query. Assuming everyone's playing by the rules, I can see how an NFT could be used to indicate when someone has an ownership license to play a game (but not the mechanics of how that right would be enforced were someone to patch their local copy to just ignore the rights check). If the game is cloud-hosted, this is easier to enforce.

benlivengood 4y ago

The easy solution is Good Old Games. Download the installers and archive them wherever you want. NFTs are a red herring for this use case.

zepppotemkin 4y ago
Or just offer steam keys
- meroes 4y ago
  Even Steam revokes paid for content, which I think is the issue being discussed. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1148174213 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=11481...
  - vultour 4y ago
    Not sure how this link proves the point you're trying to make. I can in fact still download all the games that no longer have a page on the Steam store.
    - meroes 4y ago
      Sorry for the late reply. Dungeon Siege 1 had an expansion pack called Legends of Arranna which was sold as a bundle at first on Steam. Sometimes later LoR was removed from everyone's library leaving only the base game. You can download/pirate LoR and apply a steam fix, but as far as I'm aware, you either have to pay or pirate for LoR. The link is "grey" legally AFAICT (pirated but nigh-abandoned)
    - bombcar 4y ago
      There’s at least one game steam pulled from purchase history because it was completely unusable when the servers and auth servers shut down.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jayd16 4y ago

Nah, NFTs don't quite fit the bill. They can act as receipts but they're not good for hosting the product. I think the spirit of your desire is valid though. What I want to see is the invention of some kind of digital legal-trust structure. In theory, SAAS providers could produce some kind of "serverless" way to run their SAAS. Trusted cloud providers could host the SAAS past the lifetime of the original company. Users would need to pay for the hosting but the service can live longer than the company given there was a desire. Legally things could be structured such that this works for closed source SAAS such that it remains closed source. It hits the niche for when just open sourcing the product on the way out isn't feasible.

yreg 4y ago
If the receipt part is solved then torrent is enough for hosting installation files, no?
- jayd16 4y ago
  If you can torrent, then why bother with the receipt?
  - kinakomochidayo 4y ago
    Because developers will want to make the game content only accessible to buyers who have the receipt
    - jayd16 4y ago
      If the devs have servers to validate authorization anyway, then NFTs are unnecessary. Were also discussing the case where the devs go under and no longer provide such a service. Asking clients to check their own NFTs is very weak DRM. So what is the actual proposed flow?

yreg 4y ago