Ubisoft’s first NFT plans make no sense
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
- Skins are purely cosmetic and tied to a competitive game that many people tie their life to. Cosmetics of differing expense make sense, the better players show off their personality in the expense and style of their cosmetics.
- Skins are tradeable on the steam market which itself is a ledger, no reason for it to be distributed.
- The best thing about skins is that after you buy them and you don’t want them anymore, you can resell them and recoup a portion of the money you spent, or in some cases even make profit.
- Additionally, because the ledger isn’t distributed, valve can actively change skins and fix mistakes to them. This allows for user submitted skins to even work, as they can respond to DMCA take downs
Many decisions are taken to increase market value. It makes sense a distributed ledger based on blockchain if that increases the shares value, but I guess that you mean that it does not improve the product at all. And I can't agree more that if anything it makes it worse.
This is basically laughing at kid's being poor, can't stop it. But game producers are actively creating those environments where even if its just cosmetics you are still in a lower caste if not buying into cosmetics.
There are also pattens by Ubi or activation where you are places on server with higher rated player so when they dominate you their characters with weapons and skins are presented in a kill cam. That is to create subconscious idea of getting those to play better.
Thirdly on Valve and buying/selling items. Arcanas are skins in Dota. They are very expensive as its alternative character skin with new voice lines and visuals for skill. Nowdays arcanas are expensive, none tradable/marketable, and more importantly one time exclusive. Its massive FOMO pressure. Back in the day you could buy an arcana and while it costed you a bit you could sell it back at small % loss, not anymore.
Those companies are doing all of it cuz it makes them piles of cash, as those tactics while predatory - do work - and work very well.
I think people with nicer skins are more highly invested in the game both literally and figuratively, and thus are more likely to be better. I don’t think kill cams are the way valve is trying to convince you to buy skins.
And for your last point, yes that sucks but is that any worse than the default experience for literally every multiplayer video game on the market?
I said it, but it seems like you are ok with it, be it physical or virtual goods?
> I think people with nicer skins are more highly invested in the game both literally and figuratively, and thus are more likely to be better. I don’t think kill cams are the way valve is trying to convince you to buy skins.
Please read what people write, instead of creating misconstrued replies. Its not valve, its patented method of placing you with HIGHER skill opponent who has skins/weapons that you dont have in order to heard you into conclusion that you should get skills.
> I don’t think kill cams are the way X company is trying to convince you to buy skins.
You don't have to think. They filled patent for this, how daft one need to get to clam they mean the opposite of what the patent they filled for. Like how do you arrive at that conclusion?! Honestly how?
This is not 100% effective method, but example of subtle emotional manipulation of vulnerable player-base, like kids/teens into spending money.
> And for your last point, yes that sucks but is that any worse than the default experience for literally every multiplayer video game on the market?
What? What is your point really? Shitty practices are ok as long everyone is using them? 'Mercury in your cereal?' - but every brand has them so that makes it ok.
> I said it, but it seems like you are ok with it, be it physical or virtual goods?
This is absolutely not what I said and incredibly insulting of an implication. If you’re going to talk about misreading peoples comments, please practice what you preach. I will not be responding to the rest of this comment because you have convinced me you’re not approaching this dialogue in good faith.
It really is not any different from Valve's system except it's way more complicated, it's using a trendy thing, you don't need Ubisoft to trade things (although you still have to complete trust in Ubisoft for the NFTs to have any use as they still have to mint the items and could still remove an item or ban a specific item number), item duplication is impossible, and fraud protection is impossible.
So Ubisoft could delete the item from the game, and therefore owning the NFT means nothing. What's the point of using NFT instead of a Ubisoft owned DB?
Now they get to say they're using NFTs in their press.
And they've even launched this on an older game, so they can test if it results in increased engagement or revenue.
Less work. Maintaining a marketplace is resource intensive. If the same functionality can be achieved with NFTs, it makes little sense to use a proprietary solution.
Users may consider this a bug, but from Ubisoft's side it's less responsibility.
Are you seriously saying that their motivation was that it's less work?
They just embed a URL. You are buying a URL, which I think must be publically available due to being on the blockchain, unless it's encrypted with the buyer's pubkey which would make some sense.
Crypto in general feels like MMM scams but for men.
Currently, a lot of the frontends are not open. They pose the same degree of rugpull risk as any ordinary web site. That is unlikely to remain the status quo since both collectors and artists will ultimately demand a proof of redundancy. But as it stands, it's a bubble, and the rules aren't set.
If you go to Contract and then Read, there's a function you can execute towards the end which gets you the URI for a token. If you grab a token ID[2] and enter it in, you'll get back an IPFS address. Should be more permanent than a random image hosting site, but it's certainly not the same as storing the image on the blockchain.
[1] https://etherscan.io/address/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118... [2] https://opensea.io/collection/boredapeyachtclub
No, you don't own the URL either, and if the URL goes away, you still own the NFT.
All you own is the NFT - a hex number that encodes the solution to an obscure equation.
Owning the NFT means nothing since you don't own the game in which they're used.
I think you're essentially agreeing with the article - Ubisoft's plans make no sense beyond simply being trendy. They are worse in any practical sense than a simple server-side solution.
A conventional database would obviously be much better for Ubisoft. This is just illogical fad-chasing.
> Skins are tradeable on the steam market which itself is a ledger, no reason for it to be distributed.
This is false in the Dota2 world. Some skins and cosmetics cannot be put on the market again or resold. Some people would see this constraint from a centralized force as a flaw.
> Skins are purely cosmetic and tied to a competitive game that many people tie their life to. Cosmetics of differing expense make sense, the better players show off their personality in the expense and style of their cosmetics
In decentralized gaming, anyone is free to take those assets and build a game off them. For example, if you had a certain rare skin, and someone made a dota fan game (or custom game if you are from the old WCIII days or custom lobby in current dota days), then you could enable certain functionality if they had the skin or NFT. There is a lot you can do from here that isn't purely cosmetic but also not P2W.
> additionally, because the ledger isn’t distributed, valve can actively change skins and fix mistakes to them. This allows for user submitted skins to even work, as they can respond to DMCA take downs
Excellent point on DMCA. On submitted skins, some people could see that as a limit. Who approves submissions (this was a big complaint in previous TIs)?
I am someone that has a lot of stuff on the Dota2 marketplace, and some of the centralized decisions have definitely left me with some bitterness. For example, I mentioned before that some cosmetics are not re-tradeable or ever seen again after some period of exclusivity. Except this rule was broken once where they allowed an Invoker cosmetic to come up again (the kid Persona), but for some reason didn't bring back [Dark Artistry] in an event where they put these skins together. I had the kid persona invoker item but never had the [Dark Artistry]. They essentially devalued my cosmetic, again somewhat arbitrarily.
But the skin owner can code pauses/restraints in the NFT smart contract, right? A decentralized market wouldn't change that.
> In decentralized gaming, anyone is free to take those assets and build a game off them. For example, if you had a certain rare skin, and someone made a dota fan game (or custom game if you are from the old WCIII days or custom lobby in current dota days), then you could enable certain functionality if they had the skin or NFT. There is a lot you can do from here that isn't purely cosmetic but also not P2W.
But for that you need to have free assets, to the point where someone else can build a game. And I bet in that case you don't need to own the skin, just load the asset in the game and that's it.
I think it is fine if skin providers in a free marketplace can impose constraints on their NFTs. I think the problem is if someone can impose arbitrary constraints on all the assets at any time.
> But for that you need to have free assets, to the point where someone else can build a game. And I bet in that case you don't need to own the skin, just load the asset in the game and that's it.
Yes, you need certain amount of assets. I am not sure why you wouldn't need to own the skin. We already have verification for assets in centralized ledgers to exclusive access. I am saying a situation where I might give asset owners access to specific game functions if they own an asset from another game for example. This is pretty useful for RPG games (think branching paths in games like Mass Effect or other Bioware games)
If the game maker doesn't want to restrict who uses the skin? And I guess that's the thing that would happen if someone makes a mod out of free assets.
Certainly not. The assets are owned by the game developer. The NFT is just a receipt that you paid for them.
I suppose another developer can read that receipt and offer you some content in their game, but if that content looks anything like the original asset, they're liable to get sued for copyright infringement.
> but if that content looks anything like the original asset, they're liable to get sued for copyright infringement.
I am thinking something more along the lines of a game that supports in-game mods for it. There is nothing limiting you to use the original asset; you just need proof of ownership to give access to a different functionality. I have no idea how this would work across developers and with copyright, but there are real scenarios right now that would love to use proof of ownership or for mods.
It may be the case for Ubisoft. However, some NTFs include the IP rights. For example, if you bought a Bored Ape NFT, you'd have the rights to use that Ape any way that you want. You can license it out for a Cartoon. Movie or Comic Book. Sell T-shirts, etc.
You could purchase a custom illustration for $5 from Fiverr that would look better than a generated ape, be more suitable for your use case, and also comes with full rights.
Which surely exists separately from the blockchain in conventional contract law?
An NFT can't "include" IP rights. A notice on a website where you buy it might have a grant of contract rights.
Once again - the blockchain adds nothing or very little in return for a ton of technical complexity.
2021: Praise Valve, the only big name keeping in-game-crap economies free of "blockchain" garbage and generally being the least awful one.
How low can the games industry sink?
Yes.
Steam users most of all though because it exploits bad habits people have like gambling, collectionism, and completionism with all the ugliness that comes with them for the sake of profit.
Some players like the ability to pursue luxury, express themselves and display status. Now Valve as an established player; market operator and sort of a financial institution of the "tradable hats" world plays conservative.
Personally I think that this is a capitalism thing: any company that finds a way to sell this type of luxury suddenly finds out why other people are doing it ($$$$$) and it’s very hard to turn down a constant stream of money.
Source: https://youtu.be/4nCt99ezhiA
Not that distributed is even in the initialism of NFT, so I guess csgo skins are NFTs.
The tax fraud schemes make sense for now. Party A makes 10 NFTs and sells 1 to Party B for $10,000. Party B makes 10 NFTs and sells 1 to Party A for $10,000.
They both then donate their remaining NFTs to a charity and take a $90,000 tax write-off each.
Will work until the IRS is able to hire the additional 80,000 enforcement agents they’ve asked for.
Otherwise why did the IRS pay out $30MM in refunds for “Slavery Credits” that had no basis in law?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-pays-30m-in-slavery-credits...
There are literally thousands of examples of things like this.
It's easy to find a small museum to donate small amounts of artwork to at an inflated value. But what charity wants NFTs?
And donating intellectual property to charities with high claimed values isn't anything new. That's why in 2004 the American Jobs Creation Act required that any donated intellectual property be valued at the lesser of its cost basis and its fair market value. (See: 26 USC § 170(e))
So in your example, each would accrue a $10,000 income tax liability by their sale and be able to write off a $10,000 gain by their donation's basis, accomplishing nothing.
I attended an event last night in a museum where over $150k was raised for local Charities by auctioning off NFT Art. It will probably become more common than one might imagine.
If you feel like participating in a large scam, perhaps. Personally I would feel bad and I rather not touch this.
You can still use it as a way to invest in artists.
And just to actually touch on this specific aspect of artists and being exploited, it's a laughable suggestion to mention this in this context when NFTs are one of the first times in recent history when artists can actually take back control from being exploited and unable to provide for themselves without succumbing to essentially giving up their soul - to unlocking their creative freedom and earning potential like we've never seen before.
Smug and lacking intellectual curiosity
Too bad the game is boring; the future roadmap is stale compared to upcoming competitors; and the dev team has become deluded from their success derived from first to market.
I can see the next Pokemon-like NFT game do well.
Still doesn't seem to require a blockchain. Axie Infinity decides whether assets (on-chain or not) are compatible with their game. That means the control over (and value of) the assets are centralized with the game devs anyway.
Note I’m not saying this is a good thing and I think all the entities involved should have the same regulatory responsibility but you can see the greasy cogs whirring in some executives brain.
It’s also not a claim I made so I’m not sure why you addressed that question to me.
The Axie Infinity model is verifiably unsustainable and doesn't even generate income unless the game is actively growing. Demand for SLP depends on demand for breeding which in turn is dependent on demand for new users, it's not a pretty picture.
I mean, it seems like an way for artists to collect donations, and to distribute the donations so that less popular artists get a larger share, because even the most popular artists only have 1 "you own the NFT representing the 'original' version of this piece" to sell per piece of artwork.
Unsurprisingly, all the scammers and get-rich-quick people are making a lot more noise.
An NFT registry is just a list of people who own numbers, and they get made fun of because a) owning a number isn't very useful, and b) anyone who wants to own the same number can just make a new list. But identities are exceptions: a) a username for a specific app is one of the few cases where it is useful to own a number, and b) because a specific app will only look at a specific list, i.e. it's reasonable and expected that I might own the 'ineptech' username on HN and someone else might own it on some other platform.
So, if you were going to make some sort of distributed social app, e.g. a twitter clone, it would make sense to use an NFT-like registry to track ownership of the handles. I believe this is basically how urbit identity ownership works, although it was implemented before the NFT craze.
This is indeed the most attractive reason for a globally distributed database of "valuable things", but proof-of-whatever powered "trustless" systems (cryptocurrencies) are still terrible. There was a really good experimental system with articulated trust: https://github.com/andres-erbsen/dename
There could be simpler solutions even without a big bad central authority. Nodes participating in the federated network could build consensus among themselves (after all, each node has to voluntarily honor the database, whether that database is on the blockchain or not). The identity ownership can be controlled via knowledge of the private key. Just like you can currently sell your Twitter or Insta username by selling the password.
It's an experiment for sure, but the nice thing is that the tokens are only $50 each initially (they base the total number of tokens on the purchase price of the house so that they come out to $50 each) so it's low risk.
You can get the tokens too at https://lofty.ai (I have no relation to them other than being a customer, but they are a YC company).
> but you lose a lot of money on management fees that way.
(It's just not you paying the fees at this point in time.)
Jokes aside, it could be that for some people the public and decentralized history of token ownership is more robust and transparent.
Basically take any ens domain and add ".link" to the end of it and it'll proxy to the ens domain.
But other than that, you don't have to use it if you don't want to.
There are people who have a small amount of money and desire to part with it in exchange for nothing more than proof they parted with it and a dream of getting rich. And whenever that happens, lots of immoral parties will spring up to take advantage of it, no matter the externalized costs.
In most cases, these things are being run by small-time scammers offering big companies free money in exchange for using their IP. I can't really blame non-technical companies for falling for a slick pitch offering revenue at almost no risk.
But Ubisoft's approach is special. They're running the whole thing themselves. They already have pre-mined however many currency tokens they want, and they can mint as many new NFTs (strange name, as they actually seem pretty fungible aside from their ownership history) as they want. They own the whole ecosystem in order to extract as much money from it as the suckers will bear.
It's slimy, but it fits right in with Ubisoft's history of being slimy, and much worse. They know exactly what they're doing here. It's up to us at large to determine whether we find that acceptable or not. Sadly, I think far too many people will accept it as long as they get their next Assassin's Creed or Far Cry.
Of course they don't need a blockchain.
A big fraction of the NFT sector is Axie Infinity, which is a Ponzi on the downslope. Their Smooth Love Potion Token is down 75%-80% from peak, and their Axie token is down about 25%. Thousands of poor people in the Phillipines have bought into this Ponzi. Since all the money comes from new users buying in, it has to collapse at some point.
OpenSea is most of the rest of the NFT sector, and most of their offerings are low-effort junk. Someone is selling "colors" - solid color squares for each of the 6 hex digit combinations you can use on the web. Really.
I'm worried that the NFT clown car is going to take down the entire virtual world sector. I'm all in favor of interesting metaverses, but what the NFT crowd is producing is total crap at insane prices. About two new vaporware NFT worlds are announced each day on Reddit.
If you are selling an NFT to US persons for something that doesn't exist yet, it's a security offering and you have to register with the SEC. The SEC brought the hammer down on the ICO crowd in 2018, which is why you seldom see ICOs any more. NFTs are mostly an effort to get around securities regulation.
The window of opportunity for crypto is closing. China has pretty much banned it. India is cracking down. The major countries that allow crypto are starting to regulate them as financial institutions. Scam operators are retreating to the Cayman Islands and Bulgaria.
Otherwise, at some point this rather self-contained 'crypto-sphere' will fallback on itself and the non-core participants (i.e. not the enthusiasts) will lose interest.
> And despite all the bold talk of "decentralization," the Quartz system is still so deeply controlled by Ubisoft that we wonder whether a simple internal database managed directly by the company would be a better fit.
It's also NFTs for just a single game.
Technically you absolutely can run a centralized blockchain and mint NFTs on it (EVE Online did this recently in their latest Alliance Tournament, where IIRC the corpses of player characters who were killed during the event became immortalized as NFTs on an isolated branch of Tezos that was created for the event). But at that point congratulations, you've just made a worse database. The only point of blockchain tech is decentralization (if you care about features and not just branding your product with the latest hype).
However, for all the NFT features (mainly being able to reliably transfer ownership without relying on any specific company) you do need a blockchain.
But you're going to be relying on a specific company anyway to host your asset. The NFT itself is nothing but a certificate. People who buy fancy guns in Ubisoft's new game might represent them as NFTs but that means nothing unless Ubisoft puts them in the game, keeps them in the game, and keeps the game state updated with the blockchain state, which they can stop doing at any time.
In fact, this has literally happened before. Crypto stooge Calvin Becerra had a bunch of his NFTs stolen, and Bored Ape Yacht Club declared that they will start ignoring the blockchain and unilaterally declared that the images belong to Becerra, even though the blockchain says otherwise.
The best case I can make for NFTs is securing ownership of digital assets. Let’s say I spend a few thousand on the Steam store. Then for some reason I charge back a transaction on my credit card. Valve will instantly ban me and I lose access to everything. Now if there was instead a system where my ownership was recorded on a token outside of valve’s control and that ownership entitled the holder of the token to access the game in perpetuity, that would be useful. Maybe.
But even I’m not convinced by this. Steam and other digital stores like Kindle are already hugely successful. It’s possible that people would spend more on digital goods if their ownership was irrevocable and transferable but I doubt it.
These hardly count as real NFTs. You can only transact them on Ubisoft approved market places, only centrally registered Ubisoft accounts can hold them. And since they control the game, they have all the rights to ban items from the game, even if they insist they can't reverse transactions.
Some other store is going to respect that token you paid them no money for and give you access to the game anyway? Why? Are they going to do that for all the games bought with stolen credit cards?
This story keeps getting told and it just makes no sense to me.
So, the NBA, NFL and MLB might all hand out "I'm a VIP sports fan" tokens, and Nike, Adidas, Red Bull etc.. might treat you special because of it. You can't dupe it. But, you can transfer it to anyone you want and Nike can't take it back.
That might actually be the two exact reason any of these organisations/companies wouldn’t want to use NFTs for something like VIP tokens.
Everything about the 'useful' side of NFTs where people actually use them for something promotes bad cryptocurrency opsec. One day someone will steal all the in-game skins and guns and hats or whatever, and there's nothing Ubisoft will be able to do about it. They won't be able to refund people, or replace items, of offer any sort of fix. That will be the end of the whole idea, and if Ubisoft have built it into the heart and soul of all their titles, the end of Ubisoft itself.
It seems like a very high risk strategy. The only logical reason I can think of for them doing it is that someone at Ubisoft has sold the board on the idea, and is essentially running a Tezos pump and dump scheme, and they've made a chunk of change from the 30% increase in the price that this announcement brought.
NFTs are pogs.
You can't use your Cornflakes Rooster Pog to unlock Minecraft content.
There's no point in moving around your Ubisoft pogs. You can't use them in Fortnite.
And because anyone in the world can print cardboard, they're infinitely inflatable and worthless.
They're rows in the database. That's it.
The NFT angle is essentially marketing. Ubisoft are cashing in on the NFT hype. As far as that goes I'm quite impressed, and maybe even happy for them. People making money by spotting an up and coming trend and executing an idea for it is very much the startup ethos I admire most.
What I don't understand is why you'd bet a company that has a $5bn market cap on it.
Instead of investing in something long term, such as a rendering system to hedge against Epic Games and make inroads into film and immersive storytelling, they're chasing bullshit for a quick buck.
I'm not sure how a single actor could steal all of the tokens unless their smart contract development team is inept and accidentally included some kind of "transfer_all_tokens" function.
Just provide a way for the NFT owner to associate their assets with a particular in-game account, e.g. by storing the username on the blockchain with the NFT, or by signing a file with the username and details of the last trade. Once that's done they no longer need to keep the keys online. When the NFT is sold the new owner can update the username to refer to their own account.
Presumably all the usual security measures such as hardware wallets for key storage would continue to work for these NFTs, at least as long as you're not forced to use game-specific wallet software.
> make no sense
That's a lot of redundancy for such a short title.
For some reason, I think the uber rich of the world have waay too much money and are willing to throw it around in spectacularly-risky trends without caring about value investing.
this one only makes sense for the issuer
consumers want one that makes sense for consumers
obviously there is an audience that doesn’t want any NFT plan to exist at all, that audience matters the least
> For a supposedly decentralized and "open" technology, Ubisoft places a lot of restrictions on who can own and use Digits. Quartz users have to be 18 years old, reside in one of a handful of countries ("USA, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Australia, or Brazil" for now), and use two-factor authentication on their Ubisoft Connect accounts.
> Quartz owners also have to reach "XP Level 5" in Ghost Recon Breakpoint before they can collect or use the NFTs, a system seemingly designed to discourage pure speculators and to ensure "the Ubisoft Quartz platform is made for players, and for players only," the company says. That XP level status is confirmed by linking Quartz to your Ubisoft account, which is, of course, centrally controlled and subject to its own terms of use above and beyond the detailed Quartz terms of use.
To me, that's kind of a minor point. Just because some lawyers made them put a bunch of tiny font writing in their EULA doesn't really mean much at all. If it's possible for a player to control their private keys (which it is if there's any ability to transfer NFTs to a wallet outside of the game), then these restrictions are meaningless. If this is the case, players will be able to transfer their owned items to other games (which support them), even games not produced by Ubisoft.
That's what would be really interesting to look into, not just some 15 minute dunk piece from some writer skimming a EULA.
I don't think it is possible. Apparently they can only trade on two third-party marketplaces, approved by Ubisoft. I guess that the private keys and blockchain nodes must be tied to Ubisoft accounts. Also,
> Players who don't meet any of Ubisoft's requirements "will not be able to acquire Digits whether on the Ubisoft Quartz platform or an authorized third-party marketplace, nor have another player transfer their Digits to you... If you are not eligible, the transaction will fail."
It doesn't seem to be just an EULA.
No such game exists, and it's unlikely that it ever will, as the article explains.
> which it is if there's any ability to transfer NFTs to a wallet outside of the game
In your own skimming of the article, you seem to have missed the point that the blockchain they're using is very tightly controlled by them. It's even mentioned in one of your own quotes.
The closest thing to compare it to is MS BizTalk, XSLT, or half a dozen of those other "enterprise" services and technologies that always promised to change the world but seem to never really pan out, and everyone who hears about the project responds with a "WTF why are you doing it that way?" it seems like it is trying to solve a metaproblem that not many people have.
But I'll admit maybe I don't understand the whole thing and am just not enlightened enough to see the brilliance. I know plenty of architects who are fluent in powerpoint that would tell me the same thing about Enterprise Integrations.
I would have almost said the opposite (for certain use cases).
From a totally rationalist point of view (which many tech people like to think they have), artificial scarcity of digital artifacts--especially those related to fashion--seems like nonsense. However, if you concede that there is a such a thing as fashion, collectibles, etc., why wouldn't it extend to an online environment?
IMO, it breaks down once you aren't owning a digital thing and it just becomes effectively an online receipt for something you don't actually own. But in a game/online world environment it makes as much sense as a lot of unique collectibles. What is also true though is to the degree those collectibles exist within one company's playground, there's no need for decentralized ledgers.
A particular disease of people deeply engrossed in a field is the tendency to come up with interesting solutions and reverse engineer the problems they solve after the fact. Right now that's about 80% of 'interesting' things happening in computing.
https://youtu.be/KZx9OwkBA14?t=1969
My fav barb was when they discussed zooming in on the authenticity barcode to confirm it's "authentic".
One of their current projects they mentioned at the time was to "use AI to predict Bitcoin hashes". I wonder if their understanding of crypto has improved since then.
I'm an advocate of blockchain tech in general, but this criticism is a) valid, and b) as old as blockchains.
* Decrease reliance on Visa.
* Instant, cross-border payment settlement.
* Other features like money streaming.
Has Visa ever let them down?
> Instant, cross-border payment settlement.
Like Visa?
> Other features like money streaming.
?
I really want to see pitches that don't contain any hype BS bingo lines to share holders (like me).
In the case of Quartz they’re also trying to do an end run around consumer protection laws by refusing refunds and grant users a very strict licence about use. You can’t even display them on video for example.
It's not, and they're not going to give up the control needed to deliver the hyperbolic claims being made by blockchain PR people. The question the studio executives are asking is not “how could we make this more useful to our customers?” but rather “How can we get those speculators to give us more money for the same feature?” or “How can I have my own cool project to brag about over cocktails?”.
As an NFT proponent, the biggest problem I see here is that even on 3rd party sites buyers are limited to "eligible" participants. I assume that's built into the contract and the marketplaces will have special code to verify it. Ugh. Very much against what I'd like to see, but perhaps inevitable.