I thought GameStop was going all in on NFTs and bragging about how it was going to revolutionize the gaming space because you could be more “invested” in the things because you really “own” (hahahaha, fucking as if) your own copy.
Oh, wait, *checks notes
They totally are winding that down and going “whoopsie doodles!”
Ryan Cohen making a quick spin because he’s a fucking idiot, and the only thing he has to sell is an “idea” of a company that respects its consumers. GameStop ain’t it Superstonkers. This guy literally went from “You’ll be buying all your games as NFTs at GameStop” to “Errm, yeah, we need physical drives, you know for the gamers, not so we can continue ripping people off with used games.” What a fucking joke. He didn’t care about physical media six months ago because he was all-in on NFTs.
GameStop gonna get Toys ‘R’ Us’d hard. If this is the best Cohen’s got right now, they’ve got nothing.
NFTs and how they only hold enough data to point to a URL aren’t doing the model any favors. NFTs have been a joke since they were initially released. They don’t show ownership of an item, they show a re-direct to a URL where an item you might be able to claim is yours exists.
The people who bought into the idea of “smart contracts” in NFTs got taken for a fucking ride. There’s simply not enough BITS to be able to store such data within an NFT. The best they can do is a URL.
Yeah I dunno man. NFTs at least allow for a softening of the walls in the garden. The potential is there for fun and interesting ideas like interoperability between games and game assets, and 3rd party platforms for buying, selling, and interacting with games and game assets.
At minimum it’s a combined digital proof of purchase and login credentials that you can custody yourself and transfer/sell at will without being forced to do so through the makers’ infrastructure.
People shitting on it seem to default to an oversimplified idea of what they are and can be, and a bad faith superiority on top.
That’s not something I get down with. I like new tech. I like experimentation. And I like seeing where things go rather than assuming I already know.
I can own digital files just fine without needing all that unnecessary bullshit. It’s the copyright cabal that says I don’t “own” them.
Funny, because I have the files stored on a physical drive. If that drive is destroyed, so are the items stored on it. Ergot, data is real and physical. You can already own it physically. NFTs are actually just one more way for wall street to justify the bullshit ways copyright doesn’t work.
Because nothing is stopping digital “ownership” from existing as it currently exists, except people who don’t like the idea that data can be copied infinitely at no cost.
This is why I never took off my pirate hat, because it’s just a bunch of tomfoolery to make you think things don’t already work this way. They do, computing always allowed data to be copied infinitely. It’s jerks who try to code locks to hide them behind who are the problem.
It’s also why I buy games at GOG, because they respect this. They sell games with no DRM and understand that this means piracy will happen, but do it anyway because it’s the right thing to do.
What if that digital file is the title to your car, deed to your home, your college degree, passport, driver’s license, etc?
If you destroy the hard drive they’re stored on, it’s no different than burning a piece of paper they’re written on. Data is always stored in a medium, whether it’s paper or a disk drive. So for digital files like that, you would choose a storage medium that is rated for long-term storage and put it in a fireproof safe. Done.
You’re basically asking “what if you lose the title to your car?” Well, there’s plenty of ways to get a replacement title, even though they’re not easy or free.
The bottom line is data is real and it’s always in a storage medium. The storage medium is what you should be worried about more.
Oh wait, that NFT you “own” is stored on someone else’s server? Oh wait, I guess you don’t own it then, because that data is on a hard drive owned by someone else in the “cloud” and if they destroy that drive, they also destroyed the item you ostensibly “own.”
Oh the server with my Title Deed for my home went down and now I have no proof I own my own home? Probably should have kept a copy of the file locally!
There is nothing interesting about NFTs because they’re a fundamental, nay, purposeful misunderstanding of what data is and how it works.
Sorry my question was poorly formed. You were talking about digital files being stored perfectly fine on a local medium. I was talking about new use cases for unique digital objects, and gave examples of different kinds of existing credentials/titles.
A scan of my Title Deed or my Vehicle Title will already be unique digital files. They can be copied infinitely so I can never lose track of them. I can even take a hash of the original file and always keep that around to make sure I’m always dealing with an original copy.
What does storing it on someone else’s property (server) and just linking to it actually achieve for me, as a person? The NFT does not change the data of the original file in any way, it’s just a hash-check itself in many ways.
Would you be okay with storing your car in someone else’s garage that you couldn’t actually see or access, but were told was secure? That’s what you’re doing with an NFT. You’re putting the actual item you own on someone else’s private property, and then claiming that a piece of paper that shows ownership (NFT) is all you need to get it back. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t.
An NFT is much more a “certificate of authenticity” than it is a title of ownership.
Personally surprised it was still up. I’m not sure I can think of a game that seemed so promising in the public beta, but then had so little at launch.
If it is a PC like many of us expect, then its use case is that they want to outdo the SteamOS experience and also provide compatibility with games that rely on kernel-level anti cheat.
Perhaps for people who want gamepass but don’t want to deal with PC gaming. But I can’t really think of anyone I’d recommend buying an Xbox to currently. Really the last place platform this generation, by a lot.
In my opinion, the fact that so many of these competing devices run windows just ruins them out of the gate. The fact that you can cleanly suspend and resume games on the Deck is its best feature by a mile, and I’ve yet to see any windows-based device manage to even come close to doing that reliably.
gamespot.com
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