It's purely a PR. Epic needs to take users and mindshare from Steam. If Steam banned eating babies, Epic would announce opening a baby restaurant.
Epic says it’s ‘open’ to blockchain games after Steam bans them
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Re: Epic says it’s ‘open’ to blockchain games after Steam bans them
#12This may be silly question: How are blockchains any different from micro-transaction or drip-dlc? As far as I see all are just way to get my money. (I'm getting old and no longer in the loop.)
Re: Epic says it’s ‘open’ to blockchain games after Steam bans them
#13Blockchain is becoming a pain in the ass. Games don't need Blockchain. It serves no purpose other than making some people rich and having the games filled with farmers that will eventually ruin everything.
" games filled with farmers that will eventually ruin everything" In fairness, this is hardly a problem unique to them. Bots are an issue in any game that gets big enough and has a black market for in game currency.
Yes, but now it's even worse. It getting out of the gaming sphere into the mainstream.
Re: Epic says it’s ‘open’ to blockchain games after Steam bans them
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you need distributed consensus to do that, though? What's wrong with a database on a server?
Wouldn't it help with the "publisher doesn't want to maintain a server for that old game anymore" situation?
If the publisher shuts the servers down, it doesn't matter if a Blockchain days you're the owner of an item.
Re: Epic says it’s ‘open’ to blockchain games after Steam bans them
#15The article misquotes Steam’s rules. Here is what Steam says: > Applications built on blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs. And the article: > Games that use blockchain technology or let users exchange NFTs or cryptocurrencies won’t be allowed on Steam … The problem isn’t the blockchain, it’s blockchain-based cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Granted, I don’t know why you’d use a bl…
> it’s unfortunate that “blockchain” is apparently synonymous with proof of work cryptocurrencies and NFTs
What else would it mean?
Supposedly "trustless" consensus systems is what all the "blockchain" hype is about. (And those are only useful for censorship-resistant money. For literally everything else you don't need them and they don't even work.)
If you were to just talk about merkle trees / hash chains or anything else that's literally "chaining blocks"… well that doesn't need a buzzword. That's not new technology.
Re: Epic says it’s ‘open’ to blockchain games after Steam bans them
#16It's purely a PR. Epic needs to take users and mindshare from Steam. If Steam banned eating babies, Epic would announce opening a baby restaurant.
Less than one month ago:
> We aren’t touching NFTs as the whole field is currently tangled up with an intractable mix of scams, interesting decentralized tech foundations, and scams.
[1] https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/144251952287594906...
Re: Epic says it’s ‘open’ to blockchain games after Steam bans them
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Virtual land. You could have a persistent game world with ownership rights and then multiple unrelated games using the public information about who owns what. Club membership. Similarly multiple unrelated games could verify that a user is a member of an external organisation to grant certain in-game privileges.
Why do you need distributed consensus to do that, though? What's wrong with a database on a server?
I think the idea is to be able to trade/sell/buy game assets on 3rd party sites. There becomes a distinction between ownership and control. A person could "sell" ownership of an item though they still control it by offering a contract. This contract would be tied to the life of the item and would be shown to any possible in-game player that wanted to take control of the game asset.
Re: Epic says it’s ‘open’ to blockchain games after Steam bans them
#18It's purely a PR. Epic needs to take users and mindshare from Steam. If Steam banned eating babies, Epic would announce opening a baby restaurant.
I can't imagine there are even many (if any?) blockchain games where it matters.
Are there really so many games blocked on Steam that can now go towards Epic?
Re: Epic says it’s ‘open’ to blockchain games after Steam bans them
#19There seems to be a lot of confusion what this means. There are two main uses for blockchain tech in games at the moment. One is as cryptocurrency for in game transactions, the other is for NFTs.
The issues with cryptocurrency are volatility and that the decentralised structure means nobody is liable if things go wrong. With VBucks for example, the VBuck literally stops with Epic. Crypto is too often seen as a way to monetise without assuming liability.
NFTs are another can of worms. All an NFT does is associate an account with an asset ID on the blockchain. For internet traded artwork this means a string associated with a URL of an artwork belongs to this person and can be traded to someone else. In a game that ID might be associated with a magic sword in an online game. For that to matter, other games would have to recognise that association and honour it so if that customer gets an account with their game, that NFT corresponds with a sword in their game too. It's all still base on trust though. There's no guarantee that a particular NFT would be recognised by any other game, or even a new version of the same game, or be recognised as representing a similar asset.
Basically Steam doesn't want to touch this stuff, because they don't want to be on the hook, either financially or reputation-ally, for any actual or implied guarantees in this area made by games on their platform. Guarantees that nobody, not even the games publishers themselves are in a position to make, due to the inherently decentralised nature of this sort of blockchain tech.
Re: Epic says it’s ‘open’ to blockchain games after Steam bans them
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you need distributed consensus to do that, though? What's wrong with a database on a server?
Wouldn't it help with the "publisher doesn't want to maintain a server for that old game anymore" situation?
This. It offers a persistence mechanism for game mechanics where decentralization is of value. Ownership and identity can become immutable, no longer subject to the whim of developers and publishers. If modeled off of open source crypticurrencies , you might also have the benefit of rigorous security and testing. Riffing off of smart contracts like ethereum offers, you could incorporate game mechanics into a ledger, assigning the rules, content, and access features to models designed and distributed within a blockchain.
Second Life and metaverse type enterprises could benefit, but do could any game with sharding and character persistence.
You'd want to incorporate a community sanity check system, to roll back the results of exploits, based on a distributed moderation and management setup that runs on election, delegation, and community consensus. I see this niche as a great playground to experiment with virtual governance, a way to search the space for systems that could enhance real world government.