The DRM issue
A topic that I've been pondering for the past month and haven't seen it brought up in discussions. I'm just throwing down my thoughts below, I'm no expert so please let me know how impossible some of these thoughts are. Shouldn't NFTs be a great DRM method in gaming? Right now, I often see people complain that the DRM used is too invasive, creates security issues, and can slow the performance or outright break a game. Now, NFTs in their current form is nothing more than proof of purchase leading you to that product. It is almost like buying a digital game at a physical store, having the code printed on the receipt, and going home to punch in the code to download.
Applying it today
More and more games are going digital, so wouldn't it just be easier to provide each copy with an NFT token that's recognized by the launcher when you try to start the game? It wouldn't require kernel-level access onto your machine and run constantly in the background. You would probably have to have an internet connection on startup each time to sync the blockchain and verify the token but it's almost a given that games these days require some kind of internet connection.
Now if you own that token, you could trade it to a friend to play without the risk of the game being damaged. This would be great for consumers, and this would be great for publishers because it could effectively kill game piracy.
For subscription models like Game Pass, Microsoft could have those copies be gated with access to them provided by a pass token. Each person could get a pass token that's timed and updated with each reoccurring payment? This part I really don't know how it would work, I'm just spitballing.
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The Drawbacks
The worst part of NFTs used in this fashion would be game preservation. What I'm picturing in the above would already call for publishers and developers to really go all in for this idea of NFT DRM. Then, if they stopped supporting the game or delisted it off their storefront, the NFT associated could be entirely useless, much like any downloadable game today. Putting an entire modern game on the blockchain at about 100GB would be an insane amount of energy and space used on it.
These are just my quick ideas of how I think NFTs in gaming could be used as a better alternative to microtransactions schemes. Since last year major companies and people like Sega, Capcom, Peter Molyneux, GSC Game World, and Ubisoft announced that they want to get into NFTs in the worst way possible. Now coming into this year those companies want to double down while more companies like Square Enix want to jump in as well. It is painting a worse name for NFTs by the day and I think they are purposely trying to crash the NFT markets so they can introduce them slowly as 1-10 dollars purchases and normalize like freemium models and loot boxes.
Just painting some pros and cons to their usage here, in honesty, I think most of what I'm throwing out here can be done without NFTs anyways, so why even bother if not for buzzwords and profits?
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Until Then,
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