Epic Says It's 'Open' To Blockchain Games After Steam Bans Them (theverge.com) 59
Epic tells The Verge that it's "open to games that support cryptocurrency or blockchain-based assets" on its game store, unlike its competitor Valve which has banned games that feature blockchain technology or NFTs from Steam. From the report: When we asked about allowing games that featured NFTs, Epic told us there'd be some limitations, but that it's willing to work with "early developers" in the "new field." Epic says that the games would have to comply with financial laws, make it clear how the blockchain is used, and have appropriate age ratings. It also says that developers won't be able to use Epic's payment service to accept crypto; they would have to use their own payment systems instead. Epic's CEO Tim Sweeney has said that the company isn't interested in touching NFTs, but that statement now appears to only apply to its own games. Epic tells The Verge that it will clarify the rules as it works with developers to understand how they plan to use blockchain tech in their games.
PayPal is not an bank but it should be! (Score:2)
PayPal is not an bank but it should be!
For cryptocurrency or blockchain-based assets they need laws like the ones for banks / stocks that protect end users so they can't use an EULA BS to take your funds.
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You're thinking politics but Valve is thinking money, legal consequences and customer retention. That doesn't mean I don't agree that there are far too many crappy asset flips and half finished games on Steam, there are. Sometimes good games don't get the promotion they need because some dev's just don't know how to be good at promotion.
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You absolutely can ban specific ways of making money on games in your store. Your business model isn't speech (at least, not when you go from talking about it to putting it in practice).
Imagine a bookshop that doesn't ban any books. That doesn't mean they have to be OK with an MLM setting up shop in their lobby.
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When I said your business model isn't speech, obviously I meant that a way of making money isn't necessarily legal (or OK with whoever helps you make money). You have a right to say what you want. You do not have a right to make money however you want. "Speech" and "business models, applied" are not interchangeable.
Of course your business model can be related to speech somehow, which Fox News's arguably is. I guess that's what you're arguing.
Now you
Value (Score:2)
TBH I don't even get what the purpose of blockchain in games is other than to try to sound cool. What does block chain add that a simple server based serial number doesn''t provide?
Valve is playing a game pretending in-game items don't have value so that it can sell then, this in of itself defies logic because if the items it sells didn't have value then of course people wouldn't buy them.
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I regularly read their forums and there's also been some discussion about suing 'blockchain' or even creating their own cryptocurrency.
The general idea is to use it to keep better track of virtual assets in the game, which are sold for real world money. So far the developers haven't been very open towards this suggestion, but it comes up again and again as people see the game as some kind of virtual market place.
I'm not sure what Valve is playing
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Valve have to say those items don't have monetary value because if they did then they'd be breaking gambling laws every time a loot box was sold.
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They don't even use some abstract virtual currency to display the value of the items, they use whatever currency you've set up for your account. And the only way to get that balance on your Steam account is to do it with real money or using the code on one of those Steam Store gift cards that you can buy in many real world stores.
Valve likely just doesn't give a shit until some big class action lawsuit comes along.
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I know, but the law hasn't noticed or maybe for some reason they are turning a blind eye. Valve makes a lot of money from loot boxes and from the wording of the law I've seen I'd say they are gambling, if they are gambling then Valve is in deep shit. EA has been the one that the focus is on with regards to loot boxes, they have claimed that the digital items have no real value. Valve has quietly been sitting by praying that no-one notices that the stuff in their loot boxes can be sold and so does practicall
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The problem is gaming misuse of a trendy term.
An NFT in gaming is basically a unique permutation of something. Could be armor, or clothing, or weapon paint, or something. Basically something completely unique and one of a kind.
Then you throw around blockchain and such just to be trendy. But really an NFT in gaming can be done using a traditional server recording all your digital goods.
Perhaps the better name for them is lootboxes. You could win a unique something or other! We call them NFT but they're just
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\ Look, I realize how retarded this all sounds, and it's probably not for you if you are a 60+ old slashdot fuck. But to some people this shit is a big deal. So just move your ass along
Re:Value (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm you're missing the fundamentals here.. Blockchain is a public distributed ledger. If you own a NFT that unlocks something, the game can't deny that. Contrast that to WoW which has a centralized thing, if your +100 Rainbow Pegasus (or whatever the fuck) disappears because their db glitched, you have no fucking recourse.
I guess I'm an old fuck, but I don't get how that's actually any different than a centralised database. I mean, if I own the game code, the game is still centralised and I can do what I want. You have a public ledger saying you own the unique purple pantaloons of dread. But I have the game code which now says that pantaloons don't exist, or purple is green or that the purple pantaloons belonging to user 'h33t l4x0r' are actually cursed socks .
If you own an NFT that's a video or jpg I can see how that is something. There is a file embedded in the blockchain. But if its a link to a Youtube video or a game item, then you are still just as beholden to Youtube or the game developer as if you didn't have a blockchain.
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So they sell you 'purple pantaloons'. You get them in an NFT. You can wear them in game.
They sell me 'purple pantaloons'. I get an email receipt with a unique key. I can wear them in game.
The game glitches and we both lose our purple pantaloons. You re-enter your NFT, I re-enter my key. We both have purple pantaloons again. What's the difference?
The developer realises that purple pantaloons were a mistake and takes them out of the game. How does your NFT alter that?
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He's got a magic link that the rest of the world can look at confirm 1337 h@x3r 446 paid perfectly good money for some purple pixels in an obscure cell phone game from the pandemic years.
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Well, indeed. Which is somehow more valuable than pointing them to the badge on his profile - because magic contracts.
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Ah, but the badge on his profile only lasts as long as MEGACORP maintains their servers. The badge on the blockchain lasts as long as a bunch of nerds maintain *their* servers!
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Why does the blockchain have to glitch? The blockchain doesn't have magic powers to control a game. Its just a ledger. The game dev has complete control of his game - he can manipulate the data he gets from the blockchain, change it, even ignore it. Don't just handwave - tell me how the blockchain controls his game and enforces whatever action it is you see happening. Does the 'smart contract' audit his code? You seem to see the blockchain and smart contracts being such an integral piece of the game that th
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Yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting - the game can arbitrarily ignore or alter the asset tied to the token. Just like they can with an item stored in a regular game database. What I'm asking is, why bother with the blockchain? It provides nothing extra.
You stated originally - 'If you own a NFT that unlocks something, the game can't deny that. Contrast that to WoW which has a centralized thing, if your +100 Rainbow Pegasus (or whatever the fuck) disappears because their db glitched, you have no fucking r
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Re:Value (Score:4, Informative)
If you buy an item on . . . let's say, Steam Marketplace in Team Fortress 2, then Steam still owns the item. You just get a copy of it in your backpack. If I buy the Sydney Sleeper in TF2 it doesn't mean I get to use it in Call of Duty: Warzone (for numerous reasons). But one of those reasons is copyright.
Valve effectively owns the copyright to the Sydney Sleeper [teamfortress.com]. The model, what it does, the name. It's their artwork. Other developers can't port over that item to the best of their ability by copying the name and the item model because they don't have the legal right to do so. Pretty sure that if CoD adapted the Sydney Sleeper to Warzone by ripping off the name and the model and textures that Steam would get a little bit hinky about that. Not sure if that would be a DMCA takedown situation but you get the idea. Lawyers would be deployed.
Now imagine if Team Fortress 2 items were NFTs. If I bought an NFT or if I got one as a random drop while playing the game, Valve would be assigning ownership of the item to me. I get the Sydney Sleeper. Not a copy of it in my backpack. It might only be ONE Sydney Sleeper. I might not have access to every Sydney Sleeper ever created (even if they were all identical to mine). But I still have mine. And if Activision and Raven were goofy enough to want to support my NFT in their game, I could grant authorization of them to implement my item in their game in a way that would work with their rules and physics. Obviously, Warzone doesn't have "jarate effects" or "mini-crits" like TF2, so it would not function the same way in their game, but they could create an item in their game modeled after my NFT so I could use it after creating an account. It would be strictly up to Activision and Raven if they wanted to go through all that trouble to attract me to their game.
There are some people out there with thousands of dollars in assets tied up in virtual inventories that can't be used anywhere except on the servers of one publisher in one particular game. If all those items were NFTs, then I would be able to use those items in any game where the publisher chose to support them in some fashion.
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OK, I kind of get that. I guess. But the blockchain doesn't actually solve any of the problems in your chain of events. You can assign levels of copyright without the blockchain, you can prove assignation of copyright without the blockchain and more importantly the blockchain doesn't technically help developers use third party assets in their game. It doesn't even help to guarantee that the asset would look and work the same in a third party game.
There's no magic inside the blockchain that makes a TF2 chara
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Now imagine if Team Fortress 2 items were NFTs. If I bought an NFT or if I got one as a random drop while playing the game, Valve would be assigning ownership of the item to me. I get the Sydney Sleeper. Not a copy of it in my backpack. It might only be ONE Sydney Sleeper.
Well no, because that's not how NFTs work. Because the NFT isn't the Sydney Sleeper. The Sydney Sleeper is an item in the game, with all the associated resources (stats, models, animations, etc.) Those aren't contained in the NFT. The NFT is a small piece of digital data, which exists on the blockchain. That data is "owned" by the wallet that signed it. That data might be a certificate of "ownership" of an item, or a JPEG, or what have you. It won't be the item itself, because it can't be, because the item
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NFTs in games are not NFTs.
They're just misusing a trendy term. Just like how a bunch of companies, including makers of iced tea, threw the term "blockchain" around. It was a trendy word and people were throwing money around.
So games adopted the term, even though it really means "you 'own' this one unique item no one else in the world would have". And it's all controlled by a central server.
Effectively it's a unique in-game collectible. That's it. No real actual blockchain used.
It's a trendy term, nothing m
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Exactly. But the NFT cheerleaders are having to do a lot of magic hand-waving to try and cover up their cognitive dissonance.
Re: Value (Score:2)
This is all so meaningless. The NFT is worthless from a factual and legal perspective as well since Valve still holds the copyright in the item. Especially in the EU where you can't sign away author's rights.
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It's a no-brainer. (Score:1)
Re:It's a no-brainer. (Score:4, Informative)
An email receipt is proof of ownership of in-game items. Blockchain adds very little if the thing you own is beholden to a centralised code base controlled by someone else. You can keep your nft as secure as you want, but the game developer can still delete the item in game.
There's no need to be so insecure though - most of us are open to a discussion and promise not to hurt your feelings too much.
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Re:It's a no-brainer. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what I don't get. Contract to do what? Give you an encrypted 3d model? What that thing does in the game is still under the total control the game developer. If they don't like you personally they can just block YOUR NFT. In the code. Which they control.
You're going to have to spell it out to me, because so far it reads like 'NFT + magic = total control').
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The developer can't change the behavior of the contract once it's deployed
But they can change the behaviour of their game. We're going round in circles. You're still not explaining to me what VALUE the blockchain brings, beyond that which can already be done with in-game collectables. You're just hand-waving with buzzwords.
Give me a concrete example. What does the 'smart contract' do and what does it enforce. You have one of 2000 purple pantaloon NFTs from 'Random Game'. The game dev removes purple pantaloons from the game, how does your 'smart contract' affect that? Why does the
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But if there's no value in the chain, there's no value in the contract. I'm guessing your endgame is that these can be traded on the open market or something? Is that what I'm missing?
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It's enforced on the chain. Unless the game itself runs on the chain, it is not beholden to the contract.
This all boils down to the same thing that makes most NFTs ridiculous in general: the chain doesn't actually contain the item that is "owned", only some description of it (URL, usually). So, the only thing that's actually owned is that description. It doesn't do you any good to own a piece of paper that says "+100 Sword of Awesomeness", if that piece of paper doesn't actually entitle you to wield that sw
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The game developer certainly can't burn the token, unless that's written in the contract.
Game server Terms of Service always give the server owner the right to do whatever they please, for any or no reason. They will most certainly spell out that you have no expectation of permanence for anything you buy for their games. All in-game purchases are ephemeral, and are subject to the whims of the server owner.
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Good (Score:2, Informative)
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Well welcome to the cold hard reality that as the owners of the shop Valve gets to determine what is carried just like every other shop in every capitalistic country since forever. If the local grocery store wants to only sell vegetarian items that's its choice just like you get to choose where to shop.
If you want a real alternative to that see the Soviet Union although you'll need a history book as it didn't turn out very well.
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Such a missed opportunity. There are a variety of interesting goods we could require that Christian bookstore carry. Oh, and Baby Gap too!
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A store shouldn't be mandating what technologies are used.
That is a very thoughtless take on a very complex legal concept of ownership. The technology here is not the issue, it's the implications of using it, specifically what it means to be the owner of an NFT.
Valve's move is about taking away your choice
Of course it is. There's very real copyright issues involved here. An NFT of artwork assigns ownership. It's functionally incompatible with what is being sold on the Steam marketplace and there's zero reason to allow it. I foresee Epic getting themselves in legal hot-water the first time they get challenged
Translation... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well at least they are now offering something to people that Steam doesn't have rather than just charging exactly the same price for 1/5th of the features.
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turns out that getting into legal battles with multiple app stores is not viable business strategy.