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Comment by crispyporkbites | Hacker News Reader

NFTs are obviously a bit silly, BUT, it would be nice if things bought on platforms like Steam, Roblox, Amazon, iTunes etc. were transferable to other games/platforms.

The platform providers would still need to agree that a specific blockchain / NFT is actually the source of truth, and so it's not really trustless. But the internet itself isn't perfectly decentralized either. I could see a future where developers could enable web3 support in their games/apps and allow importing assets, identities etc. between platforms, which would be nice.

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I'm gonna copy my questions from another thread about transferable items because I'm genuinely curious about the answers.

Why would an asset designed for one game make sense or look good or feel at home in a completely different one?

Why would companies make one of them and sell it for a million bucks instead of trying to convince more players to buy it in a shop for two bucks?

Is the mechanic of a weapon gonna adjust to the new game when you import it or stay the same? If it stays the same, it's gonna be exploit galore. If it changes, well then, what's the point? Gonna be the same AK-47 as everyone else's, but this tiny sticker on it that nobody's gonna pay attention to is unique!

Even if we pretend this is somehow a promising field, why even use NFTs and make each one a couple of pixels different instead of making a common one, selling it for like $50, buyers get a file in whichever format is agreed upon, and import them in the settings?

Ignore the speculation on NFTs as a “single owner” of a piece of digital art for now, like most high art, it’s BS.

Just think about the things you buy online, be it movies, artwork, music, in app upgrades etc. Today we trust each individual app developer to honour the purchase agreement, eg. if the Amazon disappears or changes their license agreement, all your purchases are gone.

Tomorrow we might be able to purchase a license to the asset, registered on a public blockchain, and use that to prove ownership within an application. You could actually own some of things you currently “buy” online.

This is a huge net win for end users.

>Tomorrow we might be able to purchase a license to the asset, registered on a public blockchain, and use that to prove ownership within an application. You could actually own some of things you currently “buy” online.

How? Why does it matter that it's on some blockchain?

It could be on a normal database/server, but then all parties would have to agree on who controls that, and it would be difficult for new developers to join.

We’d need some kind of way to trust a public database among untrusted participants- which is what a blockchain basically does.

This still doesn't explain how this actually proves anything, improves anything or makes the offered Amazon scenario a thing of the past.

That sounds like DRM. Wouldn't less DRM be a bigger win for end users?

I guess you could point at some metadata/description and let each game render that how it likes?

Eg if I have a red hat nft you could have that as 2d sprite art or a 3d model or just a buff to some other stat or just ignore it.

Why wouldn’t they sell it for a couple of bucks? It doesn’t have to be expensive because it’s an nft, plenty of them are sold for pennies. erc1155 is designed with lots of varying items being created on the same contract.

Why nfts? Because it’s easy to do today and has been getting more and more popular over the past three years. It seems people like them.

People don’t want to download files and import them into programs. Having one login(wallet) that you connect to anything you want and it takes your data and belongings with you seems pretty neat to me.

I seldom play video games, but I would definitely hate to have an advantage in one game, just because I had won the same or a similar advantage in some other game. Sharing stuff across different games seems a really stupid idea to me.

Would that be nice? Sure.

Are NFTs likely to do that? No. Why would game/platform creators do a ton of work so they could make less money? And even if they wanted to, which they won't, why would they bless some specific blockchain with that power? If that is at all viable, somebody like Steam or Amazon will want it to be their own digital assets registry that wins. For that, they don't need a blockchain, just a database.

>Why would game/platform creators do a ton of work so they could make less money?

I know, right? Or to look at another similar situation: why would Verizon, China Mobile, T-Mobile, and AT&T all make their voice/data networks interoperable?

Obviously, they wouldn't chose to do that.

They do that because of regulation, not because they want to.

Exactly. The early history of telephone systems was rife with refusal to interconnect.

And the analogy is terrible because the whole purpose of telephones is interconnection; the value is in the size of the network. But from the consumer perspective, portability for music purchases or game assets is at best a secondary concern.

Steam has already disallowed "Applications built on blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs." from their platform. They have a very successful item marketplace which they get a cut of and aren't interested in blockchain systems competing. Epic has said they will allow it, presumably to differentiate themselves and because they don't have such a system.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/15/22728425/valve-steam-blo...

This could be done without NFTs. There aren’t that many platforms, they could all build api integrations if they wanted. But they don’t want to because they like having users locked in.

NFTs along with all non money crypto feel like a solution in search of a problem. And all of these solutions are things already possible and easier without crypto.

Just imagine, if you bought a movie or game and could "consume" it on any platform you want, or event download files from web, skipping platforms. While technology is there, and you could prove ownership using public or private blockchain, this is obviously "bad for business" and no company will ever implement it. They better re-sell you same digital goods few times on several platforms.

Re-selling the same digital goods across different platforms is a bit of a scam really.

One day, it might not be a normal business practice.

So the idea is that when I play Call of Duty, I can wear the hat I purchased in Roblox? And when I'm in Roblox, I can use the character I purchased in Call of Duty?

Is this something that players desire to do?

Yeah, nobody wants that. I think they shoehorn this idea in every NFT discussion, even though they know it's not a very good idea, because so far it's the only use-case they have been able to come up with.

I'm not holding my breath for transferable content between platforms when big game studios cannot make save data compatible between the same PC game if bought on different stores. If you start playing Forza Horizon 5 on Xbox Game Pass and then decide to buy it on Steam, you have to start from the beginning because the save data is not compatible between the two different store versions.

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