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Comment by westoque | Hacker News Reader

This makes a good case for decentralization no? Imagine all those items in the blockchain, you can leave for years knowing you can retrieve them anytime. The only con at the point is if you lose your keys.

Reminds me of some friends who had Bitcoin and “forgot” about it and only to come back with massive profits.

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Blockchain isn't a good replacement for functional legislative and/or regulatory bodies that actually give a shit about the people they're supposed to be protecting. In this case, corporations unwilling to grant actual ownership of "digital purchases" to the consumers who paid for them aren't going to change that policy just because it sounds like a cool application for blockchain. If they were willing to do something like that, they would already offer portable DRM-free installers and license keys to match. Indeed, some publishers do exactly that, but Ubisoft's management are the sort of bottom of the barrel scum who will only be dragged kicking and screaming into a world where consumers actually own what they've paid for.

At the same time, there are people who lost their wallet and RIP to all that potential wealth. And then there are people who had their computer stolen/broken and then just downloaded Steam on a new device and had their games and saves ready to go.

Not that I'm defending centralized services like Steam, because I'm very well aware that companies have happily wielded their power to randomly lock people out of their accounts (like the main subject here). But crypto isn't solving anything either (or at least not yet).

>At the same time, there are people who lost their wallet and RIP to all that potential wealth.

Back up your password, in a safe deposit box, at a bank.

>And then there are people who had their computer stolen/broken and then just downloaded Steam on a new device and had their games and saves ready to go.

Back up your password, in a safe deposit box, at a bank.

>But crypto isn't solving anything either (or at least not yet).

How does it not solve a centralized entity taking away your license key? Sure they can stop honoring your key, but they cant remove it from you.

A license key alone is about as useful as a key in real life. If someone decides to change the locks, you're out.

Decentralizing that doesn't change anything. Crypto is once again just trying to solve something through burning coal and oil that was solved decades ago far more efficiently. Want to reclaim your game? Fire up a torrent. No need for a ponzi scheme.

You could have a system where a license is tied to a blockchain and not an account or person. It would presumably also mean that if someone gains control of your computer or account for a moment, they could steal your stuff and the company would be in the right to refuse you further survice.

Online games occasionally have stories of 'I got hacked and support helped me get my items back', where they just clone up new in game items. They wouldn't do that for things you are allowed to sell for real value.

So I think there's a real risk of trading one bad problem for another.

I don't understand how blockchain would solve this problem. How much would it cost in gas fees to download a 100GB game? That aside how would you handle licensing, revocation, etc?

Tokenized game licenses could presumably be transferred to a different wallet without depending on whatever game company to do the right thing.

OK, but where do you download the game? Even with licensing, you couldn't play offline? If so, what's stopping someone from just keeping the state of the blockchain such that the offline client thinks you own the games but you actually don't.

Doesn't seem like it'd work to me without a central authority.

You set up a server and allow any wallet with the license in it to sign a valid request to download and launch the game.

> Even with licensing, you couldn't play offline?

That’s a good point. The GOG DRM-free model wouldn’t work here. Someone smarter than me could likely give you an answer.

You haven't explained where the game is stored, though. Where would the game be downloaded from? How much would it cost to do this. If you setup a server that's centralized the defeats the entire purpose of this.

You would download the game from the same place you’d get updates if you bought a physical copy off a friend. The purpose isn’t decentralized downloads. It’s retaining the ability to virtually press the eject button and put the disc in a different console.

You're being very vague. If the game is centrally located there's absolutely no point of using a distributed ledger to begin with. The same place the game is stored can store your license.

The OP thread is about the centralized entity revoking your digital ownership over these licenses at their will. The parent you are replying to is imagining a hypothetical future where licenses around digital ownership are not merely private records on centrally owned and mutable ledgers, but rather, public records on decentrally owned and immutable ledgers. This has nothing to do with files/media and of course it is all hypothetical and legally untested, as no publisher is using public blockchain tokens to issue licensing rights.

so you have a license. The data you license is still centralized.The owner of that server rejects your license or simply shuts down the server. How does your blockchain help you? Note that downloading your data elsewehere is still infringement and hacking the DRM is still circumvention.

The idea would be that these tokens-as-licenses would not be revocable. If you hold the token, you hold the license and rights to download and play. This would need to be defined and enforced by the publishers own ToS and/or some hypothetical regulatory body that acts in users best interests - if they break this, such as blocking a specific license holder from access to the game, there would be grounds for a dispute, and clear records for it given the ledger is public.

Highly unlikely any of this will happen as it is more profitable and easier for game publishers just to stick with their current closed ledger, that allows them the ability to revoke any license as they see fit.

So in order to actually enforce your distributed blockchain license you need two centralized groups (download provider/regulator) to acknowledge it? Still don't see what blockchain adds.

In this context it doesn't add much, except perhaps a public ledger cryptographically verifying the purchases and license ownership.

> You set up a server and allow any wallet with the license in it to sign a valid request to download and launch the game.

Who will pay and maintain the servers? Blockchain here is not a solution but added overhead.

Also. What prevents me from leaking my license so anyone on Earth can download and play it for free? Note that this is the same issue that any DRM-free model faces but with incurring costs. Can licenses be revoked?

Disclaimer : I don’t believe that licence tokenization is a solution to the issue of game ownership. But what I’ll said also applies to DRM-free games.

> OK, but where do you download the game?

You download it once you buy it. After that it’s your responsibility to backup it like it would be with a physical medium. Of course, sellers would probably allow you to download it again if you have an account.

On your other points, I just don’t believe (and don’t want either) that good anti-piracy protection will exist as long as the game can be run on a platform you control.

I just hope that someday the industry finally gives up on this shit.

Platforms like GOG already sell DRM-Free backupable games. It just works. They are not on the edge of bankruptcy because of the piracy. All their games are available on Steam with the Steam DRM and still, the universe is not collapsing.

Games like The Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk 2077 are available on GOG without DRM and are still hugely profitable. It’s a win-win situation. As long as you backup your games and keep a compatible computer somewhere, Cyberpunk 2077 will be playable in 2077 without a hack.

or you could keep a copy of your receipt

But you're still completely dependant on the game company to do the right thing.

A license exists so that it can connect to the license server -- which is owned by the game company -- which then allows you to play.

You're still at their whims.

The token would have to be fungible such that an individual license can only be authenticated and not identified (“this is a real copy of the game” vs. “this is the copy we individually banned”)

Trustless trust doesn’t solve any problems here. Having your ownership of games notarized without someone central, does not mean you can access them. You need someone to enforce that.

How so? The technical answer to this problem is that it must always be possible to store games and media on media that you physically own, and load these on the gaming device in a completely offline process that does not depend on having an account.

I don't think blockchain has any application here. You already have a receipt of your purchase, and noone is disputing that, so blockchain would add nothing but an extra layer of complexity. The problem is that the rights that follow with that purchase does not match what consumers would naturally expect.

Yours is a decentralised solution though and we should point that out lest blockchain and decentralised become synonymous.

Blockchain isn't going to let you download a 100gig game a decade later.....

How do the block chains that rely on hoarding hard drives work if you can't download the contents from the disks to verify?

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