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.
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?
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.
How do I transfer a game from a shop that is already dead into one that doesn't yet exist? Any kind of transfer depends on both services still being alive and well. With NFTs I could retain ownership even when the shop is gone.
Nft need to be provided as well. Access to it, tools etc. Mining and verifying it is costintensive.
Ubisoft didn't just use nft it went to a company which provides a nft Blockchain. They could just go to any company for this. It's cheaper to just use a database.
Fiat currency is basically already proof of stack. Because there are so many like me having money in a bank account. Pensions etc.
Nft needs either a resource intensiv PoW or a PoS which both have not been be solved in a good and scaling and save way.
So why not using PoS in the normal world with creating a company, contracts and a basic database? It's good enough for everything we do and we know how to do it.
But do you agree that this is not a very difficult technical problem, and could be implemented with our without a blockchain, and that the real issue would be how to get all actors involved to buy in to such a system? Why would Ubisoft want this? Commercial entities are typically motivated by profit, not wanting to bring Ready Player One to life.
Why do companies do anything in the consumers interest? Competition.
You don't see it now, but once many games allow you to resell the skins or game itself, and gamers get used to that, publishers that don't allow it will look evil.
Coordination between many companies is an exceptionally difficult problem without blockchains. This is what NFTs solve in a simple way - a neutral platform that every party can easily integrate with knowing the rules, API and data integrity won't change.
> Coordination between many companies is an exceptionally difficult problem without blockchains.
Before we solutionise to blockchain though we should work out how we want the world to work.
This is my main issue with discourse about NFTs and Blockchain - it gets banded around as a technical solution to solve everything before anyone has even started to think of what the requirements are for the problem we are trying to solve.
I can see how once such a system comes into place, it might be functional and stable. I’m not quite sure how we’d get over the threshold from where we are to there. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I do however think it’s very hard.
This is a key question from multiple angles - a few specific ones:
1) Does Steam want to allow you to download games to their platform when you have bought it from the lowest cost seller, when they will take zero cut of the revenue?
2) Do games sales platforms want to make it so you can leave their platform en-masse with zero friction?
3) Do developers really want to lose control of being able to revoke keys (e.g. cheaters) or lose the ability to stop the transfer of the license to other players? (i.e. block resale). And if developers / game sellers retain the ability to revoke keys as part of the design of the blockchain contract, how does that avoid the original situation where Ubisoft is revoking access to inactive accounts?
4) What does it mean if I lose access to my account in an NFT world? If someone steals my account can it be recovered? Can I get my games back?
> That wouldn't be a problem with NFTs as they could just go to another game provider...
...nothing says an NFT needs to be arbitrarily transferable. Again, Ubisoft is launching an NFT that has a huge laundry list of conditions around who can own them and when and how you are allowed to transfer them.
If Ubisoft won't let you transfer your Ghost Recon pants NFT to whomever you like, why would they let you transfer an NFT representing a game?
> 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.
Again, this is not a technical problem, it's a legal and economic problem. And as you say, we already have this feature (without NFTs), so why do we need NFTs? I bought a copy of Satisfactory on Epic; I'd like to play it on Steam. There's is zero technical reason why I can't go through some basic oauth flow to verify that I control both accounts, and let me remove the license from Epic and add it to Steam. Or even better, let me press a button and turn my copy on Epic into a product key that I can paste into Steam, or resell on Ebay. Wouldn't that be cool?
And why doesn't this exist? Well, because the companies involved (markets and publishers) don't want it to. So, well, yes, you could also solve this is a much more difficult and expensive way (with NFTs), they don't want that solution to exist either.
Steam already had a very well functioning marketplace for transferring digital items including - in very limited cases - games between accounts. Why can't I sell the copy of Portal 2 I've finished? Again, no technical reason, but because that's the last thing they want people to do.
Ubisoft could generate some XML with list of games and sign it with their private key with known certificate. This XML is proof of purchase that you can back up and import into other stores. All it takes is some cooperation between stores. You don't need blockchain, it's basic public key cryptography.
And Dropbox could be replicated with a couple of servers and rsync...
There's a lot more complexity to building a global game/item reselling marketplace than proving ownership once.
NFTs give a consistent, 100% uptime, permissionless, platform where the APIs never change and participants don't get bored and turn off their "xml signing server" because it's not profitable any more.
No, that would require the other game provider to accept your Ubisoft-minted token. Since they already don't with a very centralised system that makes this very easy, having an intermediate token adds _more_ friction.
> No, that would require the other game provider to accept your Ubisoft-minted token.
Game providers already accept games from other shops. I can import my Steam games into GoG right now. That feature exists. The issue is that it's very limited due to digital game ownership being a mess.
> having an intermediate token adds _more_ friction.
It adds no friction at all, as you could hide it completely within the client. But it would allow adding a "Backup" button that could backup all your game ownership into a tiny file instead of having to download TB of game data in the hope that you can reinstall them later (which rarely works with modern games due to mandatory updates).
Game services aren't allowed to give away games for free. The game you own on Steam is a different one than the one you own on GoG. So it requires the publisher's permission to allow this kind of import which in turn means it's rarely available. Also this kind of import essentially allows you to duplicate games, as you can import a Steam game into a GoG account and than sell the GoG account while still keeping the game on Steam. Without proper tracking of ownership it's a mess.
With NFTs you have a framework of ownership and both the entry on Steam and the one on GoG become the same thing. If you sell or refund your game-NFT it disappears from both services.
????? Adding a non-steam game on Steam is not transferring it, it's a simple shortcut. Your GoG game will not be installable through Steam. Your Ubisoft game will still launch uplay. It's a damn shortcut. I'm sorry you're in denial about your NFTs being worthless, but you ought to cut your losses now.
It's a quick and easy way to dramatically increase their user base.
At the moment nobody can complete with Steam because Steam has most of their games. If there would be a way to transfer games between services, services would have to compete and what services they offer instead of just relying on user lock-in.
That might not be up for Steam to decide, first-sale doctrine already exist as law in many countries, what's missing is the enforcement of it for digital goods:
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.