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[LazyParrot]

I'm not a fan of this type of monetisation but NFTs are no different than the crazy monetisation Valve set up for Counterstrike gear or TF hats.

If it's no different, then why use NFTs at all? I've been hearing about how the blockchain is about to revolutionize all aspects of our lives for what seems like the better part of a decade at this point, but somehow every implementation of the concept either never materializes, gets abandoned or turns out to be a scam.

 

[Three]

If it's no different, then why use NFTs at all? I've been hearing about how the blockchain is about to revolutionize all aspects of our lives for what seems like the better part of a decade at this point, but somehow every implementation of the concept either never materializes, gets abandoned or turns out to be a scam.

Because NFTs are a more transparent and decentralised method of achieving the same market for digital assets. NFTs are better for both ownership and being able to see trades. Ubisoft could set up a centralised digital asset market exactly like Counterstrike but that would actually be worse for users since the assets would still be owned by Ubisoft and reside on their servers only. Neither method is going to revolutionise your life though.

 

[LazyParrot]

Because NFTs are a more transparent and decentralised method of achieving the same market for digital assets. NFTs are better for both ownership and being able to see trades. Ubisoft could set up a centralised digital asset market exactly like Counterstrike but that would actually be worse for users since the assets would still be owned by Ubisoft and reside on their servers only.

I don't really see the difference. Ubisoft still has control over all that crap in the end. They can just remove any given item from the game, or just shut the game down altogether. Sure, you'll still "own" them after that, but what value is an NFT intended for use in a game going to hold if the game no longer exists or simply won't let you use it?

 

[Three]

I don't really see the difference. Ubisoft still has control over all that crap in the end. They can just remove any given item from the game, or just shut the game down altogether. Sure, you'll still "own" them after that, but what value is an NFT intended for use in a game going to hold if the game no longer exists or simply won't let you use it?

Yes if either game shuts down then your digital asset wouldn't have a game to run on.

You were asking if they're the same why use NFT to begin with. I gave you some advantages of NFT over the alternative centralised market. Now you're saying aspects that are the same. I don't get it.

With NFT you still have more ownership because your wallet isn't controlled by Ubisoft/Valve and it is a standardised market. Valve/Ubisoft can ban your account in a centralised market. If it were an NFT they cannot really ban your wallet from a trade and stop you from selling your assets.

 

[LazyParrot]

Yes if either game shuts down then your digital asset wouldn't have a game to run on.

You were asking if they're the same why use NFT to begin with. I gave you some advantages of NFT over the centralised market. Now you're saying aspects that are the same. I don't get it.

You said the advantages was that items wouldn't be owned by Ubisoft or reside on their servers. My question is: how is this an advantage if Ubisoft essentially still retains full control over how and when you can use them? The only thing they can't control seems to be who you sell them to, but how much of a plus is that really if they can just render them worthless whenever they feel like it and thus ensure that nobody will take them off your hands?

 

[Three]

You said the advantages was that items wouldn't be owned by Ubisoft or reside on their servers. My question is: how is this an advantage if Ubisoft essentially still retains full control over how and when you can use them? The only thing they can't control seems to be who you sell them to, but how much of a plus is that really if they can just render them worthless whenever they feel like it and thus ensure that nobody will take them off your hands?

But this is the exact same for Counterstrike and a centralised market. It would be stupid to destroy and completely remove an item from a game for no reason, you can ban a user on a centralised market though and have them lose all their digital assets since they are owned by Valve/Ubisoft. With NFT you can't really do that. You own your wallet and even if you're banned from the game you can still trade your assets. The game shutting down or whatever is common to both and not an advantage to either.

 

[VolticArchangel]

 

[LazyParrot]

But this is the exact same for Counterstrike and a centralised market.

That was kind of my point.

With NFT you can't really do that. You own your wallet and even if you're banned from the game you can still trade your assets.

In theory. Remember that Ubisoft still has full control over the connection between the blockchain and their games. If assets are unique, then they must be uniquely identifiable. If they are unique identifiable, it would be trivial for Ubisoft to add code to the game capable of flagging any given asset in your inventory and preventing it from being used ingame.

If Ubisoft specifically wanted banned players to lose control over their assets, they totally could make that happen. Maybe not on the blockchain, but within the game itself. And since these assets only have value because they are tied to the game, severing that connection just ends up having the same effect as revoking access to something stored on their servers - you're left with nothing of value.

 

[Three]

That was kind of my point.

You asked if they're the same why use NFTs and not the centralised market where they use a single server and control your account, found in games like Counterstrike. I gave you the advantages of NFT. It's standardised so you can use every client application out there for trades or monitoring the market, it has more ownership than a centralised market because you have control over your wallet and trades and it's further separated from the game. Now you're saying if Ubisoft wanted to they can go out of their way to make it the same in terms of shutting down a game or removing items from a game. I'm struggling to see your point. Why shouldn't they use NFTs then? Especially as it is a standardised market at the very least.

If they are unique identifiable, it would be trivial for Ubisoft to add code to the game capable of flagging any given asset in your inventory and preventing it from being used ingame. If Ubisoft specifically wanted banned players to lose control over their assets, they totally could. Maybe not on the blockchain, but within the game itself. And since these assets only have value because they are tied to the game, severing that connection just ends up having the same effect as revoking access to something stored on their servers.

But doing so would mean removing that uniquely identifiable asset from your market/game. They can do this in a centralised market and worse. Why would they do this though, especially if they have no control over the wallet itself and there is a separation of ownership/control there at least? You would be destroying your own market and trust since you can't tell what is tradeable or not.

 

[VolticArchangel]

By their own words recently, Ubisoft should become comfortable on people not buying their games anymore.

 

[Fahdis]

Nice discussion L LazyParrot and T Three

I see it from the perepective that if Ubisoft delists the game and if it was popular enough, the asset on the Blockchain could theoretically gain value if those assets were cross play. Let's take Assassin's Creed for example:

- Player earns a rare skin that can be used at any point in the future within the series.
- How they get the skin will be monetized by the company themselves or someone is willing to sell it via smart contract.
- There has to be a litmus attached to attaining said skin instead of a random RNG lootbox. Let's say I Platinum the game. The Platinum itself is an NFT but restricted to your number in sequence of attaining it. And it releases a skin for you that can be worn in the game, future game and perhaps in other Ubisoft games. Street Fighter 4 did this with PlayStation Home as only 1.4% of people had the Platinum and the Akuma T-Shirt. You couldn't sell it but I expect it would have fetched a pretty penny.
- However, the downside is that almost every game will do things serverside, so any mods or trainers helping you "cheat" won't be registered. This works on GaAS really well since it has a community, think of Rocket League or Fortnite. And games will have a finite life expectency.
- If game gets delisted in the future. It becomes a classic collection and can sit in a virtual museum for people. You can loan skins to people for a price and vice versa in other games.

Good possibilities.

 

[LazyParrot]

You asked if they're the same why use NFTs and not the centralised market where they use a single server and control your account, found in games like Counterstrike. I gave you the advantages of NFT.

And I stated that these are only advantages as long as Ubisoft decides to play nice. The fact that you consider simply storing the data on their servers to be the inferior option seems to suggest that you don't exactly trust them to play nice, either. And who can blame you? It's Ubisoft.

It's standardised so you can use every client application out there for trades or monitoring the market, it has more ownership than a centralised market because you have control over your wallet and trades and it's further separated from the game.

Is it really "further separated from the game" if the connection to the game is the only thing giving these assets any monetary value at all?

Now you're saying if Ubisoft or Valve wanted to they can go out of their way to make it the same in terms of shutting down a game or removing items from a game. I'm struggling to see your point.

Valve already blocks inventory access for banned CSGO players, as far as I know. Just like Ubisoft, regardless of the technology used, Valve has an interest in keeping their asset economy running smoothly. So if they're preventing trades, there's probably a good reason, namely cheating and fraud. As we all know, the NFT and crypto spaces aren't exactly free of fraudsters and scammers, so whatever Ubisoft decides to do in that space will have similar countermeasures in place.

And I mean, wouldn't you want that, anyway? I don't really see the upside to allowing banned players from profiting further from the game. Sure, you could argue that a ban might be unjustified and that separating the asset economy from access to the actual game will protect you from Ubisoft's tyranny, but in that case... if you expect Ubisoft to be this untrustworthy, why wouldn't you also expect them to take any of the measures I listed in my other posts?

Why shouldn't they use NFTs then? Especially as it is a standardised market at the very least.

That was pretty much my original question. If NFTs are so amazing for everyone involved, why aren't Valve using them? Or anyone else, for that matter? Why has every attempt to inject blockchain technology into an actual game - including Ubisoft's own back in 2022 - failed so miserably? Why do all of the games out there actually making use of the technology feel like they're designed first and foremost as a means for speculation, with the game part being little more than an afterthought?

Hell, let's take this beyond gaming. Where the hell is the blockchain, period? It was supposed to revolutionize every industry and all aspects of our lives, but a decade later it's nowhere to be found. I work in tech and every single person I know IRL who was doing blockchain related work during the boom is doing something else now. Projects got axed, companies went broke and folded, more conventional alternatives inevitably won out.

The whole thing about the blockchain being a solution forever in search of a problem is as true now as it was 10 years ago.

 

[Three]

Is it really "further separated from the game" if the connection to the game is the only thing giving these assets any monetary value at all?

Valve already blocks inventory access for banned CSGO players, as far as I know. Just like Ubisoft, regardless of the technology used, Valve has an interest in keeping their asset economy running smoothly. So if they're preventing trades, there's probably a good reason, namely cheating and fraud.

Yes because the game ban doesn't result in a wallet ban meaning you've separated what you own from the user being able to play the game or not for cheating or offensive behavior. That usually means loss of your digital assets. Valve own them, you don't. With NFT the wallet owner does and it's separated. Keeping an economy running smoothly and preventing cheating or other types of moderation in the game are separated for better or worse.

And I stated that these are only advantages as long as Ubisoft decides to play nice. The fact that you consider simply storing the data on their servers to be the inferior option seems to suggest that you don't exactly trust them to play nice, either. And who can blame you? It's Ubisoft.

Sure, you could argue that a ban might be unjustified and that separating the asset economy from access to the actual game will protect you from Ubisoft's tyranny, but in that case... if you expect Ubisoft to be this untrustworthy, why wouldn't you also expect them to take any of the measures I listed in my other posts?


That was pretty much my original question. If NFTs are so amazing for everyone involved, why aren't Valve using them? Or anyone else, for that matter? Why has every attempt to inject blockchain technology into an actual game - including Ubisoft's own back in 2022 - failed so miserably? Why do all of the games out there actually making use of the technology feel like they're designed first and foremost as a means for speculation, with the game part being little more than an afterthought?

Hell, let's take this beyond gaming. Where the hell is the blockchain, period? It was supposed to revolutionize every industry and all aspects of our lives, but a decade later it's nowhere to be found. I work in tech and every single person I know IRL who was doing blockchain related work during the boom is doing something else now. Projects got axed, companies went broke and folded, more conventional alternatives inevitably won out.

The whole thing about the blockchain being a solution forever in search of a problem is as true now as it was 10 years ago.

Because not playing nice would actually require more work and make your market economy untrustworthy and confusing. It would require more work to make it the same as a centralised system whereas using blockchain is meant to help create an open decentralised market without having to reinvent the wheel yourself on your own servers where you control everything. It would be like saying cash is identifiable by a unique number on notes so if the government wanted to they could block use of specific cash/notes when paying for anything so it is the same as a bank being able to seize your assets. Surely you can see even though it is uniquely identifiable a separation exists between your wallet with no real ties to a person and an account controlled by one company. That's where the separation exists.

Using that id to remove assets from your economy would be impractical and there is a separation with cash that doesn't exist with an account. You would have to start getting people to check whether items that were previously tradeable and had value are tradeable or have value or not now based on some unique identifier. You would have to ban wallets that you can’t even legally prove are linked to the player. It would become a broken, unnecessarily complicated market quickly. So if they wanted to they could go out of their way to make a much more complicated system that defeats NFTs purpose and makes it the same as a centralised market but there is no reason to. Why would you want your economy to be far more complicated than it needs to be, requiring more maintenance, greater cost to them, benefiting nobody and may not even legally be allowed because you can't tie wallet ownership to a player just as I haven't seen companies issue bans based on credit card information.

 

[LazyParrot]

Because not playing nice would actually require more work and make your market economy untrustworthy and confusing. It would require more work to make it the same as a centralised system whereas using blockchain is meant to help create an open decentralised market without having to reinvent the wheel yourself on your own servers where you control everything. It would be like saying cash is identifiable by a unique number on notes so if the government wanted to they could block use of specific cash/notes when paying for anything so it is the same as a bank being able to seize your assets. Surely you can see even though it is uniquely identifiable a separation exists between your wallet with no real ties to a person and an account controlled by one company. That's where the separation exists.

Using that id to remove assets from your economy would be impractical and there is a separation with cash that doesn't exist with an account. You would have to start getting people to check whether items that were previously tradeable and had value are tradeable or have value or not now based on some unique identifier. You would have to ban wallets that you can’t even legally prove are linked to the player. It would become a broken, unnecessarily complicated market quickly. So if they wanted to they could go out of their way to make a much more complicated system that defeats NFTs purpose and makes it the same as a centralised market but there is no reason to. Why would you want your economy to be far more complicated than it needs to be, requiring more maintenance, greater cost to them, benefiting nobody and may not even legally be allowed because you can't tie wallet ownership to a player just as I haven't seen companies issue bans based on credit card information.

You keep going on about all the benefits of NFTs and the blockchain, about how adopting it will benefit both the company running the game and its players, and about how not doing so would actually result in unnecessary costs and needless complexity.

And for the third time I'll ask: What's with the overall lack of blockchain adoption not just in the games industry, but in pretty much all other industries and fields it was supposed to revolutionize? The technology has been around for ages at this point, the way it functions is generally well-understood and implementation appears to be fairly simple. Considering all the problems it supposedly solves, why isn't it seeing widespread use?

If companies thought it would save or even make them money, they'd be adopting it en masse. But they aren't. If customers thought it provided them with something they wanted, they'd be clamoring for it. But they aren't. Why? What do you personally think? Are people just too dumb to see the light?

 

[Three]

You keep going on about all the benefits of NFTs and the blockchain, about how adopting it will benefit both the company running the game and its players, and about how not doing so would actually result in unnecessary costs and needless complexity.

And for the third time I'll ask: What's with the overall lack of blockchain adoption not just in the games industry, but in pretty much all other industries and fields it was supposed to revolutionize? The technology has been around for ages at this point, the way it functions is generally well-understood and implementation appears to be fairly simple. Considering all the problems it supposedly solves, why isn't it seeing widespread use?

There is an overall lack of games with resellable/tradeable game market economies to begin with and for some reason judging by this thread there seems to be some hatred towards NFTs as that tradable market economy in games too. There have been NFT games though.

Me giving you the benefits of using something doesn't mean that should be more popular. It would be like me listing the benefits of open source software and you saying but why isn't linux as popular as macOS or Windows. Then questioning if open source is so great why doesn't MS use it. It's likely control.

If companies thought it would save or even make them money, they'd be adopting it en masse. But they aren't. If customers thought it provided them with something they wanted, they'd be clamoring for it. But they aren't. Why? What do you personally think? Are people just too dumb to see the light?

It certainly saves them money in setting up and running their own trading backend but I suspect that NFTs have a bad reputation and not many in the small pool of very popular games, especially those with tradeable game assets have used it. Most of the much bigger games don't allow monetary trading to begin with and use ingame currencies only.

 

[Fahdis]

I believe I understand the issue you're both having to iterate to each other; instead of relying on the company to make the servers. In Blockchain, a Network requires a Consensus and DAO where users are given voting rights to keep it decentralized.

- Users can put up Dedicated Servers (see Warhawk for Reference) so skins only unlock on them. The mediary publisher for services provided is Ubisoft since its their game where asset services on Smart Contracts are provided by them (or even better would be a 3rd party Tokenized company with audits).

- Every transaction has a minimal fee based on % so there is a sustainable ecosystem within the NFT side on the ledger.

No one has total control this way. However, the issue is proposition of value. I am 100% sure Ubisoft will start with Assassin's Creed. Notice how their skins sell like hotcakes. Imagine unlocking a rare mount and there's only 3 of them. Some shitfuck CSGO AK skin sold for 500K recently.

 

[Hudo]

Ubisoft and Embracer should merge. Their managements seem to be equally retarded.

 

[LazyParrot]

There is an overall lack of games with resellable/tradeable game market economies to begin with and for some reason judging by this thread there seems to be some hatred towards NFTs as that tradable market economy in games too. There have been NFT games though.

It certainly saves them money in setting up and running their own trading backend but I suspect that NFTs have a bad reputation and not many in the small pool of very popular games, especially those with tradeable game assets have used it. Most of the much bigger games don't allow monetary trading to begin with and use ingame currencies only.

Yeah, people hate NFTs, especially in the gaming space. Can you blame them, though? As far as I can tell NFT games are all either scams, shit, dead, or some combination of the three. I suspect the people making these definitely have a target audience, but I'm fairly sure it isn't gamers.

Me giving you the benefits of using something doesn't mean that should be more popular. It would be like me listing the benefits of open source software and you saying but why isn't linux as popular as macOS or Windows. Then questioning if open source is so great why doesn't MS use it. It's likely control.

First of all, I wouldn't be saying that, mostly because it's simply not true. Across all end user devices Linux is actually more popular than either Windows or MacOS/iOS, and Microsoft is the world's second largest open source contributor.

But let's assume for the sake of argument that Linux retained all of its benefits and features, while also, for whatever reason, being as dead in the water as the blockchain is right now. If someone told you that there's this amazing, completely free OS with incredible tools for software developers, a perfect fit for everything from web servers to embedded systems and even high-performance computing... but nobody is currently using it for any of these things, and all those who have tried in the past have failed.

Wouldn't you be skeptical?

 

[Three]

Yeah, people hate NFTs, especially in the gaming space. Can you blame them, though? As far as I can tell NFT games are all either scams, shit, dead, or some combination of the three. I suspect the people making these definitely have a target audience, but I'm fairly sure it isn't gamers.


First of all, I wouldn't be saying that, mostly because it's simply not true. Across all end user devices Linux is actually more popular than either Windows or MacOS/iOS, and Microsoft is the world's second largest open source contributor.

But let's assume for the sake of argument that Linux retained all of its benefits and features, while also, for whatever reason, being as dead in the water as the blockchain is right now. If someone told you that there's this amazing, completely free OS with incredible tools for software developers, a perfect fit for everything from web servers to embedded systems and even high-performance computing... but nobody is currently using it for any of these things, and all those who have tried in the past have failed.

Wouldn't you be skeptical?

Linux as a consumer OS is not that popular outside of the modified Linux that is Android. Before one of the big players decided to use it in something mainstream it was pretty much dead in the consumer OS space for decades. The problem with NFT is that whenever somebody big like Ubisoft or SE decide or announce they're going to use it for something legitimate people behave like they're the devil incarnate even though pretty much the same system exists with even more evil overarching control in other games they don't have a problem with.