this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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Archive.org is well, a non profit archive, not a storefront. If you used NFTs and wanted to charge for it, you would need to charge per download. Finally, while a NFT could provide a proof of license, so could any other database.
GOG might let you do it if you buy a game from them once in a while. Steam constantly subsidises downloads by allowing devs to mint and sell their own steam keys, I don't think it's going to be an issue.
And, yes, you could have a database somewhere -- but then the proof of ownership might disappear with that database, e.g. when the publisher goes bankrupt. Also the publisher has incentives to make ownership transfers awkward, slow, etc, the blockchain doesn't.
Another option would be the equivalent of a central bank, some public institution (as in public law) which keeps the database. But do you really want to register your ownership of a license of XXX Hentai Boobmania with the copyright office?
Don't get me wrong I'm far from a cryptobro. It's just that trading licenses independently of stores is about the one thing the tech is actually good for.
I mean i’d rather register my license of XXX Hentai Boobmania with a govement office than make it permanently and irreversiblly publicly available for everyone to see.
Again, if they can be bothered to host the game, I don’t see how a database that’s smaller than most modern AAA games is more likely to disappear. You could also forgo a central database in favor of each storefront hosting thier own, and just using a private API. More secure too, since it wouldn’t present an easily attack surface for hackers.
The blockchain doesn’t need incentives to be slow and unwieldy when it takes hours to confirm a transaction, and a gas war can randomly delay things even more.
The government would probably have your actual identity, while the NFT is pseudonymous. Granted, the government could also do that. Another argument would be that the government probably doesn't want to do it.
Who is the actual authority on the database? Are publishers going to trust the stores? The stores the publisher? If the operator goes bankrupt, who is responsible for saving the database and keeping it available? Publishers can't even be bothered to keep selling their own games after a while. It's a liability, not an asset, noone actually wants it.
You'd be running the thing in a way where that's not an issue. It doesn't even need tie-in with crypto currencies, in the extreme case you need neither proof of work nor proof of stake: All that's needed is a non-fungible token on a public ledger, run by stores and trading platforms: By the stores because they legally need to provide the possibility to trade the license off-store, by trading platforms because that's their business. They would then sign off on ownership transfer to a different pseudonymous crypto key (your identity) upon receiving funds in another way.
The NFT is only pseudonymous so long as the account can’t be tied back to an actual person, since most platforms already allow gifting of games to people’s accounts, it would be trivial to tie them back publicly.
The same authority problems also apply to NFTs, does everyone agree to use the same chain and only that chain, if the chain is forked becuse the founders of etherium loose 15 percent of the entire currency on a obvious scam again which version of the NFTs hosted on it are valid? How to the platforms deal with someone scaming someone else by selling them the wrong version on a third party marketplace?
If publishers can’t be bothered to sell their own games after a while, why would they want to sell someone else’s for free, and why would that incentive disappear if they use their own private API instead of a publicly accessible one?