How did we, as gamers, let this happen? The #Epic Games Store made an attempt to become the best gaming platform on PC by allowing #crypto games. How has tha...
You got to the root of the problem, ownership vs licenses, very eloquently.
However, I don’t think it needs to be enforced for every game or software service. Yeah, it would be nice to transfer my license when I no longer need it, but I’m totally fine with software vendors not allowing transfers, or only allowing transfers through them (e.g. like Steam marketplace).
However, I do think digital licenses should be unrevokable without full compensation of the original, inflation-adjusted purchase price. And a license is not just to the client, but the complete solution, so the vendor would be required to either keep the server in operation or make the server available for the end user to operate themselves, and if they release the server component, they are released from their obligations to the licensee.
So if I own a license to a game with an online multiplayer component, and the company wants to discontinue the servers, I get complete access to the server in a form that I could reasonably run myself to maintain the complete solution, complete with my user data. I could then legally host it for any other licensed user to access (though they may need to provide their user data to me to load onto my instance).
At no point would blockchain be required, but it would be an option if vendors wanted to outsource license verification, otherwise they would need to keep their license servers running indefinitely.
Subscription services are a bit more tricky since you don’t have a long term licence. So I think for those, the vendor would only be obligated to provide you your data in a format that can be used with a similar product. So if Office 365 shuts down, they could provide your Word docs in a format a competitor (say, LibreOffice) understands, likewise for other parts of the stack. If no direct analogue is available, they have to make a reasonable effort or face legal damages for breach of contract.
That’s about as far as I’d want to take it.
blockchain is a solution looking for a problem
I disagree. The problem is clearly stated: we don’t trust centralized banks to manage currencies. Central banks have proven willing to steal from the average person by maintaining positive inflation (essentially a convoluted tax on savings). Currencies can also be replaced, which means money is a revokable license to value, not value itself.
But it creates other problems as well. Since it’s a store of value uncorrelated with fiat currencies, there’s going to be speculation between the two. If that speculation outpaces mass adoption for transactions and as a store of value, it’ll scare away the mass market and it’ll stay dominated by speculation.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no valid use case, it just means we need to be more careful about the use cases we choose for it. In the case of games, the vendor would be the only one to produce new coins or whatever, so that eliminates mining entirely, and if the vendor has a fixed price for goods, speculation can be kept under control. Coin minting doesn’t have to be decentralized to have a decentralized blockchain, a blockchain is merely a public ledger of transactions that can be cryptographically verified by anyone. When the game servers go down, the vendor would only need to release the server code and anyone could host it using the public ledger, so there would be no need to import user data.
That’s one possible use case, but I’m sure there are plenty others. It’s just that speculation is a much more lucrative application since you just need to convince suckers to buy into your coin. But just because it’s easy to turn into a scam doesn’t mean the tech has no valid use.
You got to the root of the problem, ownership vs licenses, very eloquently.
However, I don’t think it needs to be enforced for every game or software service. Yeah, it would be nice to transfer my license when I no longer need it, but I’m totally fine with software vendors not allowing transfers, or only allowing transfers through them (e.g. like Steam marketplace).
However, I do think digital licenses should be unrevokable without full compensation of the original, inflation-adjusted purchase price. And a license is not just to the client, but the complete solution, so the vendor would be required to either keep the server in operation or make the server available for the end user to operate themselves, and if they release the server component, they are released from their obligations to the licensee.
So if I own a license to a game with an online multiplayer component, and the company wants to discontinue the servers, I get complete access to the server in a form that I could reasonably run myself to maintain the complete solution, complete with my user data. I could then legally host it for any other licensed user to access (though they may need to provide their user data to me to load onto my instance).
At no point would blockchain be required, but it would be an option if vendors wanted to outsource license verification, otherwise they would need to keep their license servers running indefinitely.
Subscription services are a bit more tricky since you don’t have a long term licence. So I think for those, the vendor would only be obligated to provide you your data in a format that can be used with a similar product. So if Office 365 shuts down, they could provide your Word docs in a format a competitor (say, LibreOffice) understands, likewise for other parts of the stack. If no direct analogue is available, they have to make a reasonable effort or face legal damages for breach of contract.
That’s about as far as I’d want to take it.
I disagree. The problem is clearly stated: we don’t trust centralized banks to manage currencies. Central banks have proven willing to steal from the average person by maintaining positive inflation (essentially a convoluted tax on savings). Currencies can also be replaced, which means money is a revokable license to value, not value itself.
But it creates other problems as well. Since it’s a store of value uncorrelated with fiat currencies, there’s going to be speculation between the two. If that speculation outpaces mass adoption for transactions and as a store of value, it’ll scare away the mass market and it’ll stay dominated by speculation.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no valid use case, it just means we need to be more careful about the use cases we choose for it. In the case of games, the vendor would be the only one to produce new coins or whatever, so that eliminates mining entirely, and if the vendor has a fixed price for goods, speculation can be kept under control. Coin minting doesn’t have to be decentralized to have a decentralized blockchain, a blockchain is merely a public ledger of transactions that can be cryptographically verified by anyone. When the game servers go down, the vendor would only need to release the server code and anyone could host it using the public ledger, so there would be no need to import user data.
That’s one possible use case, but I’m sure there are plenty others. It’s just that speculation is a much more lucrative application since you just need to convince suckers to buy into your coin. But just because it’s easy to turn into a scam doesn’t mean the tech has no valid use.