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Comment by mminer237 | Hacker News Reader

Surely Ubisoft is just storing metadata about the items in the blockchain, not the actual model or anything. This whole thing is purpose-built to support the game. If the NFT says player X owns red_skin #33856, then the game will say such, but Ubisoft would still be free to change the model at their discretion or remove the item from the game if they want, making the NFT useless in such a case.

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.

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> Surely Ubisoft is just storing metadata about the items in the blockchain, not the actual model or anything.

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?

This is how pretty much every NFT works.

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.

This surely can't be true for the typical image-based NFTs? I thought the entire point is that the full JPEG is embedded in the blockchain, thus not being dependent on any image hosting service.

On chain storage is expensive per KB so the vast majority of image-based NFTs are stored on awful image hosting services. A very common complaint among NFT buyers is how many of the "NFT-specific" image hosting services have already gone down and/or (of course) respond to things like DMCA takedowns.

Thanks for the explanation, this makes me profoundly sad and is completely absurd. They call it "minting" which I actually thought was a neat way of putting the image itself on chain which can't be deleted and is permanent, so people spending crazy amounts of money can at least have the piece of mind that what they've bought is immutable. This shouldn't be considered an NFT at all.. imagine if bitcoin was just linking to a bank transaction. In fact- a definition of NFTs: "unique digital asset that is not directly replaceable with another digital asset" - swapping the results of the URL would invalidate this. What is the actual point?

It's not as bad as you think. If the frontend and database is open source, the assets will be mirrored, and therefore end up in a giant archive. This is what happened to Hic Et Nunc last month - founder decided to pull the plug, community resumed within a few hours with other sites. The power is in the technology mix: Blockchains and smart contracts secure the transactions, everything else can be secured with existing methods. It's an incentive structure shift that's still being explored - you always want a 100% archival because it protects the represented value on-chain. It pushes the business model away from platform control as well. They will most likely have to differentiate with curation and discovery services.

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.

Hmm, that's interesting. Does each NTF has a hash of the file linked, to confirm the mirrored asset is the same as the original?

That’s a smart question

The actual point is to scam people. With the support of true-believers that this is a thing to give it hype.

Crypto in general feels like MMM scams but for men.

You can check out the contract for the Big Ape Yacht Club NFTs, for yourself[1]

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

Most are stored on traditional hosting services, some are stored on other chains (IPFS) and some are stored on the parent chain. Data storage costs vary a lot depending on the chain.

No, it's just a URL.

The full image isn't embedded. Only a link to the image.

Nope. There are some distributed blockchain file storage systems, but by and large NFTs don't use them.

> You are buying a URL,

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.

Even if it wasn't storing metadata, Ubisoft can blacklist your NFT at any point.

Owning the NFT means nothing since you don't own the game in which they're used.

> 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.

Bingo. One of the biggest challenges these days for entertainment companies is successfully marketing their product. By saying they are using NFTs they've captured all sorts of free media attention.

And they've even launched this on an older game, so they can test if it results in increased engagement or revenue.

Boom! Now you know what NFTs are.

> What's the point of using NFT instead of a Ubisoft owned DB?

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.

There are simpler and cheaper databases that can do more than 40 transactions per second.

They have a marketplace. They have the accounts. They have the payment details. They need to keep track of purchases and make sure they are allowed under their conditions. The need to verify and integrate the items into their game. They need to tie specific ubisoft accounts to crypto wallets.

Are you seriously saying that their motivation was that it's less work?

Blockchain lets them wash their hands of theft, just say "Oops, blockchain! It's theirs now, we don't control that."

Users may consider this a bug, but from Ubisoft's side it's less responsibility.

I think on the whole you’re correct. However, Valve taking a cut of items bought on the market I would argue is actually a feature, because it gives them an incentive to work on the game. Players who invest lots of money and players who don’t both benefit from the arrangement. And if you don’t like it, you can trade in person and do bank transfers and stuff like that

Even if they stored the actual model they could simply change the game and ignore what the ledger says. I still haven't heard a good use for NFT's apart from investment/scams because the simple fact you still rely on some party honoring what the ledger says. Exactly the same thing as CSGO skins, just a better marketing move.

Then surely the question is "why blockchain?"

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.

Yes, I am. Blockchains theoretical purpose is for a scenario where you need artificial digital scarcity when there are no trusted entities. Essentially any multiplayer game will require a trusted entity to originate the NFTs, host the server, and produce the clients. If you don't need to fund a trusted entity, there's no purpose to artificial scarcity.

A conventional database would obviously be much better for Ubisoft. This is just illogical fad-chasing.

Yep. The same problem that infects almost all NFTs right now. The NFT is just a link, the item itself can disappear. It is too expensive to shove most NFT artworks into the blockchain itself.

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