Should Star Citizen consider NFT's for raising funds?

Lorddarthvik

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You DO have rights though. Because the item can only be modified and transferred by you.

If the artist decides to change their asset .. it doesn't matter for you. They can't change YOURS ... they no longer own it.

Ownership is the only right that matters on the consumer level. Worrying about copyrights are for producers.



It's mine ... You can't touch it without my permission. Ownership is the only right you need. Buying a product and having the "right" to copy it and resell is inconsequential to me.

Assuming that somehow you do own the digital assett itself, not just the NFT, what would be the benefit in practice? You own a piece of ones and zeroes that you cannot play in the game, or view or display to anyone, cos patch x.xx.xxx came out and now it's incompatibe. What now? There is no obligation on CIGs part to make it work in the game, or make any changes to it to your liking. You bought it, it's yours, do whatever you want with it, it's not their problem now... BTW there is also no obligation on CIGs part to not change it's rarity to as common as hydrogen atoms in the universe, it does not mitigate the problem with artificial scarcity.
And so it would be valuable to you, and you alone. Congrats, you just bought a lot on the Moon @Indigo Bat was selling you!
Would you still want your game assets to have NFTs?

You already own a licence to the game and through that access to your ships, which you can already trade. This is a real world contract that can be enforced in court.
What would be the practical real world benefit of "owning" that ship? Just so you can say, hey, I put a bitchstamp on these ones and zeroes, I'm cool now! ?
Cos you would get nothing else out of it...

---------


In practice, CIG selling ships with NFTs attached would be no different to CIG selling ships right now if they had an open marketplace on their website, apart from probably having to involve 3rd parties, extra costs with minting and with blockchain transactions, and a bunch of problems with deluded buyers who think that if something has an NFT attached it now somehow carries value it didn't have before, and that they have rights to something they didn't have before. Not to mention the bad connotation NFTs carry with the general public and the media having a field day over it. There is such a thing as bad publicity, especially when it is court cases about CIG having to pay back money.
They could get a large influx of cash in the very short term though, that is true....

So overall I'd say No, it's not a great idea.

CIG could instead open a marketplace to trade ships/items and take a cut directly. I do believe people would choose that safe option instead of reddit traders scamming them. Would this lead to lots of articles about CIG scamming ppl by taking a cut? Yeah sure, but would it be worse than anything we've already seen? I doubt it.



@Montoya

Your idea of limited golden auroras would sell without the buzzword of NFT. It carries no real world benefit to CIG or the buyer to have it stamped with an NFT, it would just involve extra hoops to jump through which carries costs with it. Ships can be traded as is on the gray market. We just need to get rid of the Grey part in that sentence, and NFT is not necessary for that as you yourself have shown with CSGO.


TLDR: CIG could open a CSGO style marketplace to take a direct cut from ship trades, and stay away from NFTs.
 
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Harkonan

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Assuming that somehow you do own the digital assett itself, not just the NFT, what would be the benefit in practice? You own a piece of ones and zeroes that you cannot play in the game, or view or display to anyone, cos patch x.xx.xxx came out and now it's incompatibe. What now? There is no obligation on CIGs part to make it work in the game, or make any changes to it to your liking. You bought it, it's yours, do whatever you want with it, it's not their problem now... BTW there is also no obligation on CIGs part to not change it's rarity to as common as hydrogen atoms in the universe, it does not mitigate the problem with artificial scarcity.
And so it would be valuable to you, and you alone. Congrats, you just bought a lot on the Moon @Indigo Bat was selling you!
Would you still want your game assets to have NFTs?

You already own a licence to the game and through that access to your ships, which you can already trade. This is a real world contract that can be enforced in court.
What would be the practical real world benefit of "owning" that ship? Just so you can say, hey, I put a bitchstamp on these ones and zeroes, I'm cool now! ?
Cos you would get nothing else out of it...

---------


In practice, CIG selling ships with NFTs attached would be no different to CIG selling ships right now if they had an open marketplace on their website, apart from probably having to involve 3rd parties, extra costs with minting and with blockchain transactions, and a bunch of problems with deluded buyers who think that if something has an NFT attached it now somehow carries value it didn't have before, and that they have rights to something they didn't have before. Not to mention the bad connotation NFTs carry with the general public and the media having a field day over it. There is such a thing as bad publicity, especially when it is court cases about CIG having to pay back money.
They could get a large influx of cash in the very short term though, that is true....

So overall I'd say No, it's not a great idea.

CIG could instead open a marketplace to trade ships/items and take a cut directly. I do believe people would choose that safe option instead of reddit traders scamming them. Would this lead to lots of articles about CIG scamming ppl by taking a cut? Yeah sure, but would it be worse than anything we've already seen? I doubt it.



@Montoya

Your idea of limited golden auroras would sell without the buzzword of NFT. It carries no real world benefit to CIG or the buyer to have it stamped with an NFT, it would just involve extra hoops to jump through which carries costs with it. Ships can be traded as is on the gray market. We just need to get rid of the Grey part in that sentence, and NFT is not necessary for that as you yourself have shown with CSGO.


TLDR: CIG could open a CSGO style marketplace to take a direct cut from ship trades, and stay away from NFTs.


You would be banking on the idea that they would stop selling that NFT, thus increasing the price due to supply and demand.

Actually owning an asset than can only be viewed or used in a specific game would be valued strictly on the basis of desirability of the current player base.

No different than in-game items now in any game.

The difference is you would legally own it, and thus it could never be replicated, modified, or sold without your permission.
 
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Ploeperpengel

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No difference from the CSGO Community Market on Steam, except NFTs dont need to trade on the Community Market.
And that's the most important difference right there.

Taking into account we have a marketplace in the forum right here. Though it is limited by a code of conduct to not sell for a higher price than what you paid for and for good reason.
The only real benefit a test marketplace trader gets is an increase in concierge rank which is fairly limited and keeps it fun compared to the next step.

Once you are able to transfer digital items you can't really prevent poeple trying to benifit financially from that. That's Star Citizen's grey market on ebay for you. So what's the fundamental difference?

This trading activity doesn't take place within the game. NFTs in Ubisofts' vision would make it a convenience to exchange real world values within the game. For SC this would undoubtly draw in professional traders who no longer give a shit about the game economy but instead try to fuck you over for real profits within a game where you are supposed to have fun.

If you think (looking at spectrum) the community couldn't possibly get any worse? - think twice!
 

Indigo Bat

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It's mine ... You can't touch it without my permission. Ownership is the only right you need. Buying a product and having the "right" to copy it and resell is inconsequential to me.
This is pure, unfiltered delusion... depending on the NFT in use anyway. First and foremost, what actually is yours? You have an immutable entry in a ledger giving you the ownership of the blockchain blob corresponding to your NFT, and the data in that NFT is undeniably yours, but that data is the only thing you actually 'own' in the blockchain. So what does this mean?

Let's talk NFTs! We can start with the most popular form...

The most popular form of NFT right now, is the "Gallery Site" style of NFT, used by places like IPFS, Arweave, OpenSEA, etc. The data you 'own' is metadata that allows you access through the service of that server to access something on their server in a way that is controlled by the metadata in question. It is assumed that the contents of the server are being provided in good faith and that the level of ownership being conferred is legally possible. The site acts as the steward for the space of the digital good, and you have the key to it. While in some cases it can be copied or reproduced, you alone have the 'key' to 'that version' on 'that site'. You can then 'sell that key' based on the marketability, reputation, and history of 'that version' on 'that site'. The nice thing is that metadata is tiny. Like, kilobyte tiny, so you don't need much blockchain to store it.

This is not now wholly without merit, and oftentimes chains of ownership, which blockchain technology is explicitly capable of, is one of the largest sources of value in an artistic work. Famous artists get more money for their works, and legacy goods can fetch high prices.

What happens, however, when that service goes down or removes the artwork in question due to copyright violations? You now own a 'key' to a 'specific service' on a 'specific server' that contains wholly nothing. Does it lose its value? This is where the first issue with NFTs comes in: It is assumed that a NFT that leads to nothing still has value inherit in the ownership of the space where something once was. Supposedly, this may even hold true even if they entire gallery is removed from the internet, which means that the value of this kind of NFT is wholly disconnected from the actual contents the NFT points to.

This is why there is a bit of scumminess involved. If the value of the NFT has nothing to do with what the NFT points to, what is the point of having an NFT point to anything at all? The only conclusion I have is that it is trying to invent the value of legacy by tying itself, sometimes without permission or willingness, to a sense of ownership of something. Since that ownership is not actually granted within the NFT (the thing you 'own' by blockchain tracking) it is in fact, a scam. You are thinking you have purchased something you have not. It is perfectly acceptable in this model to have two separately valued NFTs that lead to the exact same image or data hosted on different servers as separate entities, and the uniqueness is based on the server that hosts each image, not the actual image or data itself!

Now, one of the other kinds of NFTs...

When people argue for NFTs, they often think of a full dataset contained within the portion of the blockchain that they own. This is a second kind of NFT, and is actually far more interesting. It is much more expensive to create in blockchain data (kilobytes of metadata vs hundred of megabytes for high resolution images, meshes, zip file, etc) but you have a snapshot of unchanging data from when it was first placed into the blockchain.

This comes at a cost, however. Any data placed into the blockchain is accessible from the blockchain itself. While there is a discrete record of ownership of that section, by having a full, readable file in the blockchain anyone on the blockchain can view it and in doing so, copy it. You 'own' that section, but the data itself is visible for all blockchain users. While the first kind of NFT can use more then a single method of ownership validation (metadata + login being the most common), having the file just out there means that it can be perfectly duplicated and reused. Your ownership is a matter of record, but the security and uniqueness of the item outside of that record is simply not possible. Once more, we are relying on the NFT itself having the value over the data it actually contains. 'This instance of this data is unique'. While this kind of selfish thinking I disagree with, it is not without merit. Although as in the first example, it is perfectly acceptable to put a second copy of the data into the blockchain and sell it as a wholly different NFT. They would both be considered 'original' NFTs. This is why NFTs are an issue. They claim to be non-fungible but the data that they are basing this claim on is anything but non-fungible. Welcome to the digital age, scarcity is a lie.

What about Star Citizen? How can we wedge NFTs into Star Citizen?!

This is the heart of the matter. I see these posts all the time, "Can we add NFTs to Star Citizen?" Well yes, you can also paint a giant dick on your forehead and declare yourself ruler of the seven combined governments of Mars, but the question isn't 'can we' but 'how do we' and 'what impact will this have on the game'?

For example, we can utilize NFT metadata combined with a transaction ledger to act as a two-factor authentication for certain content in game. To access this, you need to have a game account that is tied to your ledger account so that these can be cross referenced. With the NFT in your ledger and your account on the game, the item is yours to use. You can then sell the NFT to someone else who likewise has their account tied to their transaction ledger, and now they have that instance of the item.

"Montoya's Original Aurora" would probably sell really really well on the NFT market.

So what about trading these things, and making some real money after stealing acquiring Montoya's prized Aurora? Well, this is where CIG starts to lose out. Selling NFTs is something that can be done in a distributed manner, and so once the NFT is out and about, any further money from that Aurora no longer has an effect on CIG's earnings. For adding in all this additional two-factor overhead, working the system to give uniqueness and value to the NFTs, CIG's payday from it will be...

Nothing.

That's a horrible end to an executive summary! Do more work, maintain more systems, and get none of the rewards! But, you can make some of your players rich and famous, I guess. Assuming that they build up their own block chain for data storage to lesson the initial impact of crypto-crunching, once you reach a certain amount of blockchain data you hit diminishing returns on the power and CPU/GPU usage to continue to create space for more NFTs. While this is the secret behind Bitcoin's valuation, it adds overhead that increases over time - in general for a company, you want your overhead to decrease over time in relation to your earnings. This is backwards!

The Gray Market is 0 additional overhead to CIG. On the other hand, Montoya's prized LTI Aurora would just sell at the value of a LTI Aurora without the NFT ownership chain, so the gray market value wouldn't be quite as high. For CIG though, they wouldn't see that money either way, so its more cost effective to just let the grey market work, since it does not change their bottom line.

Let's look at another angle, ship uniqueness. You can have a 'unique' hull ID paired to a digital good to give it in game heft. This would leverage NFT technology in a useful way, still utilizing the metadata version of an NFT. The issue now becomes what happens when all possible hull numbers for a particular model are sold as NFTs? What happens when a hull is destroyed? Currently, that hull number is lost. This would match current 'real world' examples such as cars - you own a unique car with a unique VIN, and if you wreck it or it explodes that ownership is now moot, and that VIN cannot be re-used as it was listed as 'exploded'. What benefit does this give to the player? How about to CIG?

To the player, nothing has changed except more investment in keeping a ship running due to the possibility of loss of the (presumed investment) NFT. For CIG, they now have to track every hull number across every instance of every ship spawned or generated as they have implications both in and out of the game. How about fraudulently selling someone your exploded ship? You could buy a NFT hull number and load it up and find out that not only was it exploded, but it was never even salvaged so it is a total loss. What if someone (*legally) salvaged it in game? Well... all that work they did in game means nothing because they don't 'own' that hull, no matter if they pulled it out of the Stanton sun on a weekend binge of caffeine and sugar. Because once something is 'owned' in the blockchain, it can't be transferred without the 'owners' doing it.

Once more, a lot of additional work on CIGs part for a mechanic that they will not see a penny from. More work for zero return does not reflect well on a business. And now, Salvaging just became an issue as it can undermine the uniqueness of what you purchase - even possibly open the company up for legal action.

Why NFTs don't work for CIG or Star Citizen

The idea behind NFTs is to have a unique version of something that is otherwise infinitely fungible. To own an 'instance' of an item, backed up by blockchain technology. This primarily turns that instance into something that can be sold, purchased, or collected independently of the source using that same distributed blockchain technology.

Without there being something that the NFT is connected to, either internally or externally, there is nothing really different from an NFT to say, Dogecoin, and in reality it wouldn't need to be connected to any game at all at any time. There is no reason to add the overhead of such a system to a company that is making money by building a game, because it is a cost center with no return to the business - due to the distributed nature of block chain just like the grey market, there is no way to earn anything from these sales other then selling 'more' of them. So it provides no benefit to CIG for all the overhead spent in mining, new code, tracking, and handling customer support fallout.

What it does do, is provide a venue for speculative investors to purchase and resell things, investors that may not even have a Star Citizen account or have anything to do with the game at all. We're not talking small dollar amounts, either. Montoya's stolen salvaged original Aurora could probably let me retire early and just play Star Citizen until I die cold and alone, surrounded by empty pizza boxes and beer cans.

An interesting side effect is that it would be possible to 'steal' unique items outside of the game. Bitcoin has been stolen before, and there is no shortage of methods used to get into someone's ledger. With NFTs, this theft can be done without ever having an interest in Star Citizen at all. Even if the ship was recreated by CIG, it would lack the value of the original, since otherwise NFTs would just be Fungible Tokens. Finally, a game loop for piracy!
 

Talonsbane

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Ok, after having read through all of those ahead of me in this post & gifting out likes or some sort to each, I'll keep my opinion short. No please.

This being said, AFTER Star Citizen officially launches & there will be no more wipes. I could see CIG selling items that would be "unique" to an event, like the various IAE gear that anybody can buy with in game currency that would be identified as being of a certain event, like music concert tour tee shirts, then after the event, list how many of them were purchased to show a sense of rarity since they won't be selling that shirt again in the future, but I'd advise against giving each item a unique serial number. I'd also suggest that in this case CIG should limit the in game purchase of these items to 1 per account to keep the numbers as low as possible while not preventing a player that is able to purchase / earn the item during the event from doing so at a flat rate. IDK, it's still rather complicated & confusing to me. Thus, please no.
 
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Harkonan

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This is pure, unfiltered delusion... depending on the NFT in use anyway. First and foremost, what actually is yours? You have an immutable entry in a ledger giving you the ownership of the blockchain blob corresponding to your NFT, and the data in that NFT is undeniably yours, but that data is the only thing you actually 'own' in the blockchain. So what does this mean?

Let's talk NFTs! We can start with the most popular form...

The most popular form of NFT right now, is the "Gallery Site" style of NFT, used by places like IPFS, Arweave, OpenSEA, etc. The data you 'own' is metadata that allows you access through the service of that server to access something on their server in a way that is controlled by the metadata in question. It is assumed that the contents of the server are being provided in good faith and that the level of ownership being conferred is legally possible. The site acts as the steward for the space of the digital good, and you have the key to it. While in some cases it can be copied or reproduced, you alone have the 'key' to 'that version' on 'that site'. You can then 'sell that key' based on the marketability, reputation, and history of 'that version' on 'that site'. The nice thing is that metadata is tiny. Like, kilobyte tiny, so you don't need much blockchain to store it.

This is not now wholly without merit, and oftentimes chains of ownership, which blockchain technology is explicitly capable of, is one of the largest sources of value in an artistic work. Famous artists get more money for their works, and legacy goods can fetch high prices.

What happens, however, when that service goes down or removes the artwork in question due to copyright violations? You now own a 'key' to a 'specific service' on a 'specific server' that contains wholly nothing. Does it lose its value? This is where the first issue with NFTs comes in: It is assumed that a NFT that leads to nothing still has value inherit in the ownership of the space where something once was. Supposedly, this may even hold true even if they entire gallery is removed from the internet, which means that the value of this kind of NFT is wholly disconnected from the actual contents the NFT points to.

This is why there is a bit of scumminess involved. If the value of the NFT has nothing to do with what the NFT points to, what is the point of having an NFT point to anything at all? The only conclusion I have is that it is trying to invent the value of legacy by tying itself, sometimes without permission or willingness, to a sense of ownership of something. Since that ownership is not actually granted within the NFT (the thing you 'own' by blockchain tracking) it is in fact, a scam. You are thinking you have purchased something you have not. It is perfectly acceptable in this model to have two separately valued NFTs that lead to the exact same image or data hosted on different servers as separate entities, and the uniqueness is based on the server that hosts each image, not the actual image or data itself!

Now, one of the other kinds of NFTs...

When people argue for NFTs, they often think of a full dataset contained within the portion of the blockchain that they own. This is a second kind of NFT, and is actually far more interesting. It is much more expensive to create in blockchain data (kilobytes of metadata vs hundred of megabytes for high resolution images, meshes, zip file, etc) but you have a snapshot of unchanging data from when it was first placed into the blockchain.

This comes at a cost, however. Any data placed into the blockchain is accessible from the blockchain itself. While there is a discrete record of ownership of that section, by having a full, readable file in the blockchain anyone on the blockchain can view it and in doing so, copy it. You 'own' that section, but the data itself is visible for all blockchain users. While the first kind of NFT can use more then a single method of ownership validation (metadata + login being the most common), having the file just out there means that it can be perfectly duplicated and reused. Your ownership is a matter of record, but the security and uniqueness of the item outside of that record is simply not possible. Once more, we are relying on the NFT itself having the value over the data it actually contains. 'This instance of this data is unique'. While this kind of selfish thinking I disagree with, it is not without merit. Although as in the first example, it is perfectly acceptable to put a second copy of the data into the blockchain and sell it as a wholly different NFT. They would both be considered 'original' NFTs. This is why NFTs are an issue. They claim to be non-fungible but the data that they are basing this claim on is anything but non-fungible. Welcome to the digital age, scarcity is a lie.

What about Star Citizen? How can we wedge NFTs into Star Citizen?!

This is the heart of the matter. I see these posts all the time, "Can we add NFTs to Star Citizen?" Well yes, you can also paint a giant dick on your forehead and declare yourself ruler of the seven combined governments of Mars, but the question isn't 'can we' but 'how do we' and 'what impact will this have on the game'?

For example, we can utilize NFT metadata combined with a transaction ledger to act as a two-factor authentication for certain content in game. To access this, you need to have a game account that is tied to your ledger account so that these can be cross referenced. With the NFT in your ledger and your account on the game, the item is yours to use. You can then sell the NFT to someone else who likewise has their account tied to their transaction ledger, and now they have that instance of the item.

"Montoya's Original Aurora" would probably sell really really well on the NFT market.

So what about trading these things, and making some real money after stealing acquiring Montoya's prized Aurora? Well, this is where CIG starts to lose out. Selling NFTs is something that can be done in a distributed manner, and so once the NFT is out and about, any further money from that Aurora no longer has an effect on CIG's earnings. For adding in all this additional two-factor overhead, working the system to give uniqueness and value to the NFTs, CIG's payday from it will be...

Nothing.

That's a horrible end to an executive summary! Do more work, maintain more systems, and get none of the rewards! But, you can make some of your players rich and famous, I guess. Assuming that they build up their own block chain for data storage to lesson the initial impact of crypto-crunching, once you reach a certain amount of blockchain data you hit diminishing returns on the power and CPU/GPU usage to continue to create space for more NFTs. While this is the secret behind Bitcoin's valuation, it adds overhead that increases over time - in general for a company, you want your overhead to decrease over time in relation to your earnings. This is backwards!

The Gray Market is 0 additional overhead to CIG. On the other hand, Montoya's prized LTI Aurora would just sell at the value of a LTI Aurora without the NFT ownership chain, so the gray market value wouldn't be quite as high. For CIG though, they wouldn't see that money either way, so its more cost effective to just let the grey market work, since it does not change their bottom line.

Let's look at another angle, ship uniqueness. You can have a 'unique' hull ID paired to a digital good to give it in game heft. This would leverage NFT technology in a useful way, still utilizing the metadata version of an NFT. The issue now becomes what happens when all possible hull numbers for a particular model are sold as NFTs? What happens when a hull is destroyed? Currently, that hull number is lost. This would match current 'real world' examples such as cars - you own a unique car with a unique VIN, and if you wreck it or it explodes that ownership is now moot, and that VIN cannot be re-used as it was listed as 'exploded'. What benefit does this give to the player? How about to CIG?

To the player, nothing has changed except more investment in keeping a ship running due to the possibility of loss of the (presumed investment) NFT. For CIG, they now have to track every hull number across every instance of every ship spawned or generated as they have implications both in and out of the game. How about fraudulently selling someone your exploded ship? You could buy a NFT hull number and load it up and find out that not only was it exploded, but it was never even salvaged so it is a total loss. What if someone (*legally) salvaged it in game? Well... all that work they did in game means nothing because they don't 'own' that hull, no matter if they pulled it out of the Stanton sun on a weekend binge of caffeine and sugar. Because once something is 'owned' in the blockchain, it can't be transferred without the 'owners' doing it.

Once more, a lot of additional work on CIGs part for a mechanic that they will not see a penny from. More work for zero return does not reflect well on a business. And now, Salvaging just became an issue as it can undermine the uniqueness of what you purchase - even possibly open the company up for legal action.

Why NFTs don't work for CIG or Star Citizen

The idea behind NFTs is to have a unique version of something that is otherwise infinitely fungible. To own an 'instance' of an item, backed up by blockchain technology. This primarily turns that instance into something that can be sold, purchased, or collected independently of the source using that same distributed blockchain technology.

Without there being something that the NFT is connected to, either internally or externally, there is nothing really different from an NFT to say, Dogecoin, and in reality it wouldn't need to be connected to any game at all at any time. There is no reason to add the overhead of such a system to a company that is making money by building a game, because it is a cost center with no return to the business - due to the distributed nature of block chain just like the grey market, there is no way to earn anything from these sales other then selling 'more' of them. So it provides no benefit to CIG for all the overhead spent in mining, new code, tracking, and handling customer support fallout.

What it does do, is provide a venue for speculative investors to purchase and resell things, investors that may not even have a Star Citizen account or have anything to do with the game at all. We're not talking small dollar amounts, either. Montoya's stolen salvaged original Aurora could probably let me retire early and just play Star Citizen until I die cold and alone, surrounded by empty pizza boxes and beer cans.

An interesting side effect is that it would be possible to 'steal' unique items outside of the game. Bitcoin has been stolen before, and there is no shortage of methods used to get into someone's ledger. With NFTs, this theft can be done without ever having an interest in Star Citizen at all. Even if the ship was recreated by CIG, it would lack the value of the original, since otherwise NFTs would just be Fungible Tokens. Finally, a game loop for piracy!

Tell all this to Quentin Taratino ... who is getting sued for selling Pulp Fiction NFTs.
Tell him ownership doesn't matter and its all just a fairy tale receipt on the blockchain.

Ask JayZ what the courts said to Damon Dash.


Ownership of the asset is everything. It's the entire point. The blockchain is to verify and the "theory" is you can never cheat the ledger. Which is actually kinda dangerous when you think about it. lol
 
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Indigo Bat

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Tell all this to Quentin Taratino ... who is getting sued for selling Pulp Fiction NFTs.
Tell him ownership doesn't matter and its all just a fairy tale receipt on the blockchain.
I can see you are a personal of culture and read through the entire part of the post that related to Star Citizen. Didn't you... *checks up the post* ... already read the part where I mentioned that NFTs don't confer copyright and the links that I posted? Or the part where I mentioned that it is possible to embed data into the blockchain with an NFT therefor providing a full and immutable (but wholly visible and copyable) version by using more blockchain data in that very post you just quoted?

No? Okay then. Like most people pushing for NFTs, there is a very disheartening lack of understanding of HOW the technology works, methods of implementation for a company, costs associated with blockchain mining, benefit of NFTs for a business, and others. Please, just stop. The only thing you are doing is showing the dollar signs in your eyes for a quick, scammy buck at the expense of Someone Else's company.
 

Harkonan

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I can see you are a personal of culture and read through the entire part of the post that related to Star Citizen. Didn't you... *checks up the post* ... already read the part where I mentioned that NFTs don't confer copyright and the links that I posted? Or the part where I mentioned that it is possible to embed data into the blockchain with an NFT therefor providing a full and immutable (but wholly visible and copyable) version by using more blockchain data in that very post you just quoted?

No? Okay then. Like most people pushing for NFTs, there is a very disheartening lack of understanding of HOW the technology works, methods of implementation for a company, costs associated with blockchain mining, benefit of NFTs for a business, and others. Please, just stop. The only thing you are doing is showing the dollar signs in your eyes for a quick, scammy buck at the expense of Someone Else's company.

Answer me this ... if you sell me a NFT of your ween or vajayjay and store it on your personal server.
And then you delete said ween/jay pic token ....


Could I sue you in a court of law in America?


And that my friend ... is my point. At the end of the day ... I don't think CIG wants to go through any potential future backlash, regulation, or legal issues, just to "NFT" ships that they can already charge whatever they want for in real cash while maintaining ownership of all their assets. Especially in Alpha state when you have no clue what you're ultimately selling and will no longer own in the legal sense.
 
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Gucci

Space Marshal
Nov 17, 2015
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For NFTs to work it needs to MEAN something beyond normal digital assets like ships and equipment currently in the game, otherwise there would be no need for them.
They could code some limited-edition items and be done with it, they would be numbered and not be produced again.

SC could continue as it has or introduce NFTs to market something as special, beyond the normal. I dont see the downside and I honestly dont know why some of you are so against this. What are the risks of utilizing NFTs that dont currently exist without NFTs?
 
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Indigo Bat

Captain
Aug 29, 2021
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IndigoBat
Answer me this ... if you sell me a NFT of your ween or vajayjay and store it on your personal server.
And then you delete said ween/jay pic token ....


Could I sue you in a court of law in America?


And that my friend ... is my point.
Ah yes, let's completely ignore the fact we're talking about CIG, and a complete lack of understanding copyright. We got a twofer! Get me a beer! :)

1) If I created original content based on a metadata/ server NFT, sold you the NFT, and deleted the content, no, you couldn't sue me. Because you would still 'own' the NFT (metadata blob) which is the only thing conferred in the sale. I keep the money, my beautiful kitten goes back into hiding from the world at large, and you just got scammed. Seriously, pictures of anime, flat chest bat girls are a hot commodity! At least worth the cost of a new car...

2) If I created original content based on a NFT block storage, I couldn't delete the content, and by being the one to put the content in, as the copyright holder, I have purposefully distributed the content and have no recourse. Alas, sexy bat girl bits are now available, but you... YOU own the unique 'original' in the chain. Lucky you. Buy me a dinner, we'll make it a date! Thank you for the original purchase, and maybe we can work out child support instead of royalties~

3) If I write a script, and then license or sell that script to a studio, I no longer have sole copyright domain of that script. While the damages and actual legalese is beyond my knowledge (IANAL) I can tell you right now it is bad juju to double-sell copyright, because order does matter. If I embed a copy of a work whose copyright is owned by someone else, I could be held responsible for every person with access to the blockchain, because I've given copies to all of them! That's worst case, anyway, but I recall the heady days of Limewire and Napster. Those lawyers frighten me.

Again, this is how it is with EVERY NFT hawker pushing NFTs around. You never actually address any real questions or critique, and will consistently spout nonsense and gibberish with those dollar signs just glaring from your eyes for a quick, scammy dollar.

NFTs would provide no monetary benefit to CIG and instead only provide additional cost to the business, all in the name of providing 3rd parties the ability to resell digital goods at profit for selling what they created, without any ability to recoup the investment or regulate the market in a meaningful way. While there may be some benefit for digital art as 'collectible' it works against gameplay and immersion which Star Citizen is built on.
 

Talonsbane

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Tell all this to Quentin Taratino ... who is getting sued for selling Pulp Fiction NFTs.
Tell him ownership doesn't matter and its all just a fairy tale receipt on the blockchain.

...

Ownership of the asset is everything. It's the entire point. The blockchain is to verify and the "theory" is you can never cheat the ledger. Which is actually kinda dangerous when you think about it. lol
If Quentin Tarantino owns the rights & copyright to Pulp Fiction, then he should be the only person allowed to create any NFT's based on that content. To me, that would make it illegal for the NFT people to create any content based on what he owns. So they would have to come to an agreement on him selling "official NFT" versions of his product, but if he sells his own version that is still technically an NFT but not part of the blockchain, they should have no right to make money from that product.
 

Indigo Bat

Captain
Aug 29, 2021
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IndigoBat
For NFTs to work it needs to MEAN something beyond normal digital assets like ships and equipment currently in the game, otherwise there would be no need for them.
They could code some limited-edition items and be done with it, they would be numbered and not be produced again.

SC could continue as it has or introduce NFTs to market something as special, beyond the normal. I dont see the downside and I honestly dont know why some of you are so against this. What are the risks of utilizing NFTs that dont currently exist without NFTs?
Cost.
Compute Power.
Maintenance.

What is the benefit to CIG over their current systems?
There isn't any.

I want CIG to make Star Citizen, not make other people rich in a scummy secondhand market. The issue is not "What are the risks of utilizing NFTs that don't currently exist without NFTs?" The issue is "What is the benefit to CIG of utilizing NFTs that don't currently exist without NFTs?" CIG is a company, not a charity. NFTs are ONLY useful beyond the current systems for second hand market sales, which nets CIG 0 doillars.
 

Indigo Bat

Captain
Aug 29, 2021
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IndigoBat
If Quentin Tarantino owns the rights & copyright to Pulp Fiction, then he should be the only person allowed to create any NFT's based on that content. To me, that would make it illegal for the NFT people to create any content based on what he owns. So they would have to come to an agreement on him selling "official NFT" versions of his product, but if he sells his own version that is still technically an NFT but not part of the blockchain, they should have no right to make money from that product.
Pulp Fiction was made into a movie. Quentin Tarantino cowrite with Roger Avary. It was produced by Miramax, A Band Apart, and Jersey Films. Quentin Tarantino is a wonderful director, but he is not the sole creator of Pulp Fiction, and licensing for scripts can be tricky business. This is not something to go into half heartedly, as film and media law is its own specialty. I have seen it, and I fear it.
 
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Harkonan

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Nov 22, 2015
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Ah yes, let's completely ignore the fact we're talking about CIG, and a complete lack of understanding copyright. We got a twofer! Get me a beer! :)

1) If I created original content based on a metadata/ server NFT, sold you the NFT, and deleted the content, no, you couldn't sue me. Because you would still 'own' the NFT (metadata blob) which is the only thing conferred in the sale. I keep the money, my beautiful kitten goes back into hiding from the world at large, and you just got scammed. Seriously, pictures of anime, flat chest bat girls are a hot commodity! At least worth the cost of a new car...

2) If I created original content based on a NFT block storage, I couldn't delete the content, and by being the one to put the content in, as the copyright holder, I have purposefully distributed the content and have no recourse. Alas, sexy bat girl bits are now available, but you... YOU own the unique 'original' in the chain. Lucky you. Buy me a dinner, we'll make it a date! Thank you for the original purchase, and maybe we can work out child support instead of royalties~

3) If I write a script, and then license or sell that script to a studio, I no longer have sole copyright domain of that script. While the damages and actual legalese is beyond my knowledge (IANAL) I can tell you right now it is bad juju to double-sell copyright, because order does matter. If I embed a copy of a work whose copyright is owned by someone else, I could be held responsible for every person with access to the blockchain, because I've given copies to all of them! That's worst case, anyway, but I recall the heady days of Limewire and Napster. Those lawyers frighten me.

Again, this is how it is with EVERY NFT hawker pushing NFTs around. You never actually address any real questions or critique, and will consistently spout nonsense and gibberish with those dollar signs just glaring from your eyes for a quick, scammy dollar.

NFTs would provide no monetary benefit to CIG and instead only provide additional cost to the business, all in the name of providing 3rd parties the ability to resell digital goods at profit for selling what they created, without any ability to recoup the investment or regulate the market in a meaningful way. While there may be some benefit for digital art as 'collectible' it works against gameplay and immersion which Star Citizen is built on.

I think we simply agree on some things and disagree on other points.

My only contention with your points is I -do- believe the case law will favor my opinion. Obviously we have to wait and see, the court cases are only now rolling in.
But I firmly believe case law will favor NFTs being treated like any other form of private property. Once you sell it and agree to store it for that price ... you are ultimately responsible not to damage someone else's property.
 
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Indigo Bat

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Aug 29, 2021
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I think we simply agree on some things and disagree on other points.
Nope, you are completely wrong, because we're talking about NFTs for CIG and Star Citizen and you've already abandoned that. :) You have yet to raise any significant counter point, provide any valid business reason for adding NFTs to Star Citizen, and instead of tried to draw the conversation into a completely unrelated case utilizing a wholly different system then we were originally discussing.

Turn in your Aurora, its over.
 

Gucci

Space Marshal
Nov 17, 2015
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NFTs would provide no monetary benefit to CIG and instead only provide additional cost to the business, all in the name of providing 3rd parties the ability to resell digital goods at profit for selling what they created, without any ability to recoup the investment or regulate the market in a meaningful way. While there may be some benefit for digital art as 'collectible' it works against gameplay and immersion which Star Citizen is built on.
3rd parties can already resell digital goods for a profit (limited ship sales? old CCUs in buyback?) and CIG sees none of any mark-ups.
 
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Harkonan

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Nov 22, 2015
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Nope, you are completely wrong, because we're talking about NFTs for CIG and Star Citizen and you've already abandoned that. :) You have yet to raise any significant counter point, provide any valid business reason for adding NFTs to Star Citizen, and instead of tried to draw the conversation into a completely unrelated case utilizing a wholly different system then we were originally discussing.

Turn in your Aurora, its over.
This thread is literally about CIG selling ships as NFTs. I'm saying that the ownership aspect of NFTs is muddy water and has a long road of case precedent and regulation. Kinda a tough call for a company who had to go talk to a government because they were using the words "concept sales" ... when they get no flack from anyone by allowing people to make massive "pledge donations".

That's all. lol
 

Mich Angel

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Lets make it simple... NFT is hype, silly and stupid.. WHY!?

NFT are digital and the maker always are the main copyright owner.( if he is alive )
(unless ownership is transferred in writing by help of law firm. witness signature is needed for it to be 100% binding.)
Which mean the creator need to hand over all original material that he have from first sketch to finished NFT.

Same as paintings, photographs the painter/photographer still own the right to the painting/photograph you buy. (talking about original)
When you buy a original painting/photo you buy the right to hang it and care for it..
You don't buy the ownership,.. unless you get that in writing with witness signature of the transfer of ownership.

And for NFT they have another drawback than physical art don't have,
asap the server holding your supposable digital product is down so is your product .. period.

YOU are paying for digital air.. why would you do that.. it's silly.

Give it a couple years and or more and some of the now today high priced million dollar NFT will be gone.. what are they worth then.. Nothing.!

If you want to give or throw money away give it somewhere it make some good or is needed instead...

Only paintings/photograph you can buy and have full copyright ownership with purchase without the paperwork.
Is from dead artists, death of the artist automatically transfer that copyright to family or similar.
Those are not the creator as such if they sell it the copyright ownership follow automatically.

Paying for air is stupid, NFT is nothing more than digital air..

Backing crowdfunding project as SC buying jpg spaceship is best value for cash in that sense..
but yes they are still digital air..but less stupid.

CHEERS! 🍻
 
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Indigo Bat

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Aug 29, 2021
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IndigoBat
This thread is literally about CIG selling ships as NFTs. I'm saying that the ownership aspect of NFTs is muddy water and has a long road of case precedent and regulation. Kinda a tough call for a company who had to go talk to a government because they were using the words "concept sales" ... when they get no flack for people making massive pledge donations.

That's all. lol
... how can it be "Muddy Water" while also having a "Long road of case precedent and regulation"? Do you not understand words?
Have you no real business case to provide a monetary benefit to CIG for setting up NFTs that would provide better return then their current method of selling ships that would cover the cost of overhead of adding NFTs?

3rd parties can already resell digital goods for a profit (limited ship sales? old CCUs in buyback?) and CIG sees none of any mark-ups.
Exactly right! So why should CIG spend money to create a new market of NFT based second hand sales without any way to make a return on that investment?
You need a good business case to present to a company in order for them to determine if it will create value for their brand and bottom line. Shiny new internet acronym does neither.
 
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