Google Play adds NFTs
android-developers.googleblog.com
android-developers.googleblog.com
Google's "product strategy" is nonsense.
If it does not feed ads or doesn't make billions per year, everyone knows that it is only a matter of time before Google will lose interest and kill it.
This has happened so often that it is reliable how poor Google is at maintaining products and providing customer service. It is a reputation that Google has earned through its repeated actions and choices.
Policies get rescinded just like products and services get shutdown.
No. Changes for what is allowed and how things work.
Those happen whenever Google wants them to.
I think scale is important. Banning an entire classification of apps would be in the "large" end of things.
https://www.androidcentral.com/apps-software/google-play-sto...
Apps that were not updated in the last two years were declared "abandoned" and removed.
Again, this is not about how apps are categorized / classified, but rather what apps are allowed to do or not and how apps are managed in the App Store.
Google can simply decide that a feature is allowed or disallowed and force apps to change or the apps can be removed. This is part of the reason that alternative app stores exist.
> The reason behind these measures is to "protect users from installing apps that may not have the latest privacy and security features," Google explained last month.
Patching misc binaries at runtime seems difficult.
Google can give whatever reason they want or not give any reason at all.
Again, this is about what apps are allowed to do or not and how apps are managed in the Google Play app store.
You can expect that Google will adapt their policies to maximize profits, comply with laws, and keep users using Google Play.
This is yet another policy change in that regard and you can expect any future changes to follow the same high standards of transparency and customer service that Google is known for.
Actual blog title:
>Enabling New Blockchain-Based Experiences on Google Play
Very saddened to report that indeed it does. What a sad, buzzword-laden farce...
There are lots of cool uses for NFTs in game settings.
Now that some of the major hype and scams have died down, this is probably the best time for this to go live.
Like what?
Each one is procedurally-generated with a random seed and digitally signed so it's "unique" despite the millions per second that can be cranked out by a Raspberry Pi.
This is, obviously, not true. There are deck building card games that have fixed cards. Imagine Magic, but the game loads cards that are from your wallet, that you can pass to someone else wallet, by trading/selling outside the app (which, apparently, is why Apple won't allow it).
Doesn't that already exist without NTFs or crypto, e.g. the steam marketplace.
NFTs have gained a foothold in the art world. Sotheby's is still auctioning off NFTs, despite the Silicon Valley hype dying down. If it were actually useless, I don't think they'd still hold active auctions today. I don't know who Vera Molnár is, but if you want to bid on her art, you can do so now. https://metaverse.sothebys.com/gen-art-vera-molnar
Most of us don't buy fine art, so I don't think the problem NFTs solve for that use case presents itself to most of us (myself included). But looking into this, my understanding is that before NFTs, the only way you can tell you're getting an authentic painting is a piece of paper that comes with the purchase. And paintings are relatively easy to fake, so all the value is actually with that paper of authenticity, rather than with the work. Instead of a piece of paper that needs to be physically transferred now, it has all the affordances of digital objects--instant transfer, always available, transaction history transparent, and tradeable on existing web3 markets.
When the iPad first came out, lots of people thought it would fail. It didn't seem obvious why you'd want a phone that doesn't fit in your hand. But it turns out that it's a very good form factor for very specific industries. Point of Sales systems and navigation for pilots are two industries where it's made strong inroads, rather than just a nice to have for people that want to watch some movies.
So I'd say, just watch the fine art world for a few more years to see if NFTs grow or shrink. I personally think NFTs will have more uses than that, but it remains to be seen whether it will fundamentally change large swaths of the economy, or if it'll just be confined to very specific ones, like fine art.
They're separate markets.
NFTs offer no solution to the mainstream fine art market. I've never seen art sold at gallery or auction attached to an NFT for verification where the point wasn't marketing that it was NFT linked. The paper is always verified with third parties. The NFT would have to be as well, to confirm the NFT presented is the valid one for the physical art piece it's purportedly attached to.
Instead, there are people who made money in crypto who did not buy fine art, wanted to buy art, and found artistic value in NFTs. They were willing to pay and others willing to sell.
NFTs do nothing to certify old art.
> it is a massive issue in the fine art world. Even more in the fashion world where recent collections are counterfeited immediately
Auction and fashion houses would love to enforce a system of NFT-based ownership. It means they can tax future transfers of the work. Buyers of art, rationally, don't want that. It's my art. NFTs are DRM for the real world. No thank you.
Also, suppose you verify the NFT is legit. Great. What about the art? How do I know you didn't keep the original and give me a counterfeit? Or that the person you got the NFT from didn't dupe you? I always need to look at the trail and judge if each step looks legitimate, and, if not, commission independent testing.
[1] https://twitter.com/mattdesl/status/1671138742172631040?s=20
Have you bought art? I paid via wire, which was free on my end and less than a basis point for the receiver. If you're paying 10+ percent, you're paying for an auctioneer to juice the price, you're small fry or you're an idiot.
The only potent expansion there are the small fry, because many of those feed a whale. Here, again, I'm challenged to understand why payment in exchange for a song download or merchandise offer is inferior to a glorified sticker. There is simply no need to bundle these problems: small payments and artist compensation. Particularly with a solution that's rotten at each on its own. The Million Dollar Homepage [1] looks rational next to NFTs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage
I’m not sure why you have a hard time with the concept of tokenization; but artists typically lose a significant portion of revenue to more traditional systems. A trad gallery’s 30-50% fees, or Bandcamp and Patreon’s 10-15% fees are significant compared to crypto art’s 0-2.5% fees.
These are different services. Artists don't pay galleries to process a payment, they pay them for distribution. If you're distributing your own art, why on earth are you selling through Bandcamp or Patreon? Just take payment directly. (Including via crypto.)
Crypto art markets do have value in that they're a collection of buyers who place artistic value on buying NFTs. That's fine. But it's a solution for accessing those buyers. Not anything in general. It's a better gallery for a particular audience.
If you're making digital art, crypto art markets are your solution. It's circular, but that's fine--it's art. If you're not making digital art, tagging on an NFT doesn't help you get paid. You might find distribution advantages by doing that, but that's because you changed the thing you're making--e.g. a song into a digital art piece--in a way that appeals to a group of buyers who congregate on crypto art marketplaces.
By absurd analogy, suppose there was a trend of buying art slathered in mayo. There's an eclectic group in Miami, and they just love mayo art. When asked what purpose the mayonnaise serves, one artist replies "it helps us get paid." Which is sort of true. The dry work was more difficult to sell; the dripping one isn't. But that's not quite the answer. The mayonnaised art sells because there are people who like mayo on their art. (And to induce people to buy mayonnaise art, a mayo art dealer may very well charge lower gallery fees. Particularly if there's more competition.)
Simply put: one of the values of this technology is that it offers a novel, open source, and often lower fee mechanism for "paying (and supporting) artists."
What’s an example where the point of adding NFTs wasn’t to sell to people who like buying things related to NFTs? Where not only regular money transmission doesn’t work, but crypto, too, is insufficient?
The fact that the NFT is added to a physical painting or performance ticket (or the privilege of sponsoring one) is entirely separate from the work itself. That some people will pay more for the bundle is a valid market. But it’s still mayo.
And, there are cases where "just crypto" will suffice, like a direct wallet-to-wallet transfer of USDC on a L2 for a physical work—and this is another way of paying artists that Google Play can and should be able to support in their apps. The fees and settlement times are often superior to traditional infra (even Wise). But this transaction comes with no provenance and transfer of ownership, which is one of the selling points of NFT.
The simplest model falsifying that idea would be "people used to want it, Google started the project, and the project is now complete."
Which is pretty compatible with the original claim of "Nobody wants this! Not now."
Rolls eyes. NAME ONE.
I've never owned an NFT, so maybe I don't understand, but in game items/whatever seem like an actual use case, if it's considered a public database, with transaction tracing.
There's plenty of evidence that people want to be able to trade/sell in game items, considering there's an existing industry around it, unrelated to NFTs.
And that's just the very start of technical problems. Another major obvious question is: why does Blizzard benefit from you as a user getting access to a sword that you obtained while playing Skyrim?
All the ideas about game items being on the blockchain are half-baked at best.
For the choice in the implementation detail, plenty of clothing systems (Roblox included, ffs) support morphing, to fit any body shape. I don't think that necessarily always makes sense though. Having different assets, to fit the style of the game, might be a benefit in some cases.
I don't know. I like the idea of being able to give in game stuffs to my friends. I don't care how it's done, NFT or not. What do you suggest?
Allowing people to upload a weapon that does infinite damage or a skin that’s smart contract means any interaction with it steals all other contents of that user’s wallet is probably not a sustainable solution to allowing you to trade things with your friends.
Maybe you're unfamiliar with game engines, but arbitrary code isn't required to import assets or metadata. But, that's not required, and ins't required in any of the games I've seen. It's just a lookup to an enable flag in the game. You don't mint your own armor and import it.
The arbitrary code part is the extensible nature of Solidity smart contracts (in the case of Ethereum). If third party game developers can’t utilize their nfts in your game without an established partnership, then why are we using nfts? You need permission to transfer or upload an NFT doesn’t that defeat the portability argument?
This is not relevant.
> Then why use a blockchain at all?
No need. Any other public, distributed, transaction records would work. Choose one. Or don't. Some games have implemented this on proprietary systems. If you support the concept locked proprietary systems, then that's ok too! Some people like the idea of things persisting, in some form, beyond the desire for game studio to persist them.
> You need permission to transfer or upload an NFT doesn’t that defeat the portability argument?
I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what NFTs actually are here. It's just a number in a wallet, sometimes with a little bit of data. The game studio mints an NFT. It's "part of the game" once it passes through the game studios wallet. The game tracks what has passed through that game studio wallet. The owner of the thing is the last wallet it transferred to. The player of the game adds their wallet address to their game account. This allows the game to know what belongs to the player. There are ways to prove that the player actually own the wallet. The game enables those items if it sees them in the players wallet.
In the context of most of these games, it's, first, a public transaction record used for tracking what belongs to who. It's really really simple. It's public, so anyone can see it. The little bit of data attached can be used to give nicer human/computer meaning to what that number means.
I understand all of what you are saying and was aware of it before now. I do not see the value add of non-fungible tokens in relation to games beyond a single game. Partnerships, deals, development time, and so on would need to be done to allow for the transaction, transfer, and use of NFTs in between games. Buy a skin from Fortnite from a friend and use it in Halo does not make Microsoft any money unless the smart contract associated with the NFT includes a royalty system to hash out payments between all relevant parties.
It isn’t simple, it isn’t easy, and as you even say, blockchains aren’t even necessary. And if not designed properly can be abused as we have seen with many NFT projects and platforms so far.
The implementation detail is everything though. The NFT does not hold the data about the model, the model is in the game, the model needs to be created by someone to match whatever the NFT says it is, the whole thing is completely and ultimately dependent on the implementation in each game the model should be available...
The NFT would just say "player X currently holds the bits with ID N" whatever ID N means is up to each game to say, your item that is a sword in a game could be a dildo in another, matching the same NFT.
It's a complete bonkers idea that requires all games implementing support for it to create 3D models, stats, animations, for every cross-game item. It doesn't solve anything and just adds a lot of complexity to managing assets of a game.
And a game could just drop support for the NFT'd item at some point due to any number of reasons, then what is your NFT actually doing? That item you bought from someone that got it on Counter-Strike to play the game you were interested now does not exist anymore. Or the item you bought for 50 bucks because it was pretty good for your game was nerfed, and your NFT now is worth 10 cents because of it.
It's all around a bad idea with lots of implementation complexities, and bizarre market dynamics since the NFT does not mean anything concrete at the time of purchase, it's completely dependent on the state of all the games supporting that specific NFT.
I'm not sure I understand. In game items are billions of dollars of sales. The idea of an in game item, that you can trade externally, is not bonkers. See the dozens of marketplaces/grey/black markets for doing it. That was my first sentence. My second sentence is something I thought was neat, which is the ability to use this public information for something else, like sharing items between games, which is already a thing. Some sequels and collaborating studios already do this. If you unlock an item in the first game, you can use it in the second. I'm not suggested it will or should be supported by every game forever. Even a single game could use it, like Magic the gathering. Yes, in those cases it's flag. I don't understand what's wrong with that possible implementation.
NFTs are a public transaction record. That's it. Sometimes with a little bit of expensive data. There are other ways to implement a public transaction record. As I said in my comment, NFTs aren't required. I was answering the question of one use case that I saw for NFT in a game, which I regret giving. I don't have or plan on buying NFTs, and lost $100 on bitcoin. I see it as a public transaction record, which, as all the other public transaction records prove, is a concept that can have value.
Related, are there any other decentralized public transaction records, maybe without the name "NFT" or "coin", so peoples buttholes won't clench?
I don't know much about NFT, or have any experience. I thought it was neat. I don't think discussions about NFT are worthwhile, here.
It's gambling with a cheap veneer. Nobody wants or needs to pay $1 for 95¢ when they bet on a roulette wheel [1], but we do.
[1] https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-...
Steve Jobs is long gone, but Apple still has taste.