https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/square-enix-invests-in-playtron-for-their-linux-based-playtronos-first-alpha-out-now/
Playtron are quietly building up their Linux-based PlaytronOS behind the scenes, and not only have they released their first Alpha but they've pulled in another investor too.
The first hardware that will be actually using it is the SuiPlay0x1, a strange looking and sounding web3 / blockchain handheld.
Oh dear.
SuiPlay0X1 runs Playtron's device-agnostic gaming operating system, enabling gamers to play both Web3 and Web2 games across PC and mobile.
GamesBeat have some more details, noting it will have "native Sui blockchain integration via zkLogin and Sui Kiosk SDKs, enabling asset ownership directly connected to a device’s account system for the first time in the gaming industry
What is a web3 game? Something that allows you to grind for NFTs?
TF2 hats but on a block chain instead of an inventory system.
Pros:
Cons:
In theory it makes it possible for other games to use the same items to make stuff in their games (I doubt this in practice)
I've heard this before, but there's literally nothing preventing games from setting up some shared items on their own without NFTs. Nobody does it because companies want to keep their IP, and worrying about external items would be a nightmare to balance.
NFTs solve like 1% of the problem of sharing items. So much more goes into making them actually work. For example: NFT id 5551337 is owned by the player: now what? How do you figure out what 3d model to render? What actions can you perform? How does it integrate with other systems? All of that is going to have to be custom for every game involved on a per-item basis.
Yes, like all things block chains do there are obviously alternatives to accomplish the same thing.
Ah but you see, you need the blockchain version in order to be, uh... [checks notes] computationally intensive and bad for the environment...?
There was an abstract conceptual theory of system agnostic game add-ons. It isn't... completely inconceivable.
You could work with a relatively prolific engine, like Unreal, and set up a standard character model dummy with designated hard points for attaching accessories and certain default movements. Then any accessory could simply scale to the environment - Master Chef could swing a keyblade while the Elden Ring guy gets to wear Iron Man armor, because these are all "human" models with well-defined structures that could map to the associated equipment. The blockchain becomes a universal registry for these assets that a platform can read from to render the art.
The problem is that nobody ever actually implemented this universal protocol. They all just ran off making jpegs of weird animals and running fake auctions to create the illusion of a secondary market. You had zetabytes of data being processed so some Baked Alaskahole could claim his Kumming Koala was worth $40M.
I don't even strictly begrudge "the blockchain" as an idea for licensing and data storage (just please don't ask me to think about who is generating the licenses or storing the data). But it was all vaporware. None of it was anywhere close to being created, much less delivered. People were throwing billions with a b of dollars at entirely empty promises.
Collectibles are non-fungible tokens by definition, and blockchain is just a data structure.
I don't care about collectibles / NFTs, but this is nothing new in the gaming world.
Thing is, none of those advantages are real either, compared to a public database and API. Steam's inventory API already maintains items beyond the lifetime of games, AND you can use items across other games. You can't manipulate the Inventory of other games but I bet if there was demand (there isn't) this could be implemented easily.
Web 3 games are simply ponzi schemes hidden behind a super grindy game. As far as I know, none of these games actually produce anything of value from the labor put into them, so the payouts must come from new money entering the scheme.
Yep, they literally cannot work any other way than as a ponzi scheme. Because the people "earning" want to take more money out of the system than they put in, and the company is taking money out as well just to keep the game running and the employees paid, as well as to make a profit. So you need substantially more suckers buying into the system than the money that is being paid out.
Eventually, somebody is gonna be left holding an empty bag.
To me, the term "Web3 games" sounds like they're trying to make a knockoff of Cookie Clicker with NFTs.
The big thing I've seen for gaming is the idea that you can have tokens not tied to a specific game. Like maybe an achievement gotten in resident evil unlocks a cool skin dead by daylight.
Or you could implement something like Sword Art Onlines's item/skills system where they attached to a user and not a server, and servers can choose which ones to implement in their version of the game.
Of course its also possible it could be sold second hand, so maybe you think the Christmas skin of a popular character is stupid and will never wear it, but someone else just missed the event. You could sell/gift it to them, because the entitlement is yours to do whatever you want with it. Maybe you just hate the hell out it so much you offer a ton of cash just lock them all up. Idk this part of it just not my jam tbh
But why honor other companies tokens? Hell why honor your old tokens? You make the effort to create assets in your new game, are you going to just give it to a limited number of players who play both game for free, or resell it to all players? If you buy an nft for a game that then gets ignored, was it any different then a DLC, or using the steam market place to trade the item? After all i have read i don’t see where this helps players at all, and for companies, the only benefit i can see is if they pump and dump their players.
Maybe you see your game as spiritual successor to a previous game and want to honor player previous progress or achievements in the previous game.
Maybe you accept third party assets and need some market for those assets, and NFTs can represent a legally binding proof of ownership of that asset.
Maybe you want keep your live service relevent by having your assets transferable among a larger ecosystem of games.
It is very much like the steam market place but unlike steam items you do actually own it, steam can't legally shut down your account or block you from transferring that ownership after the fact.
But yeah its just a tool no idea what all game makers will want to do with it.
Then please, enlighten us!
What is a game that brands itself as a web3 game (not a game that just uses blockchain tech but specifically calls itself web3) that isn't also play to earn.
The devs have said in the discord that ceypto features will be totally optional, theyre only there so they could have a partnership with sui
Totally optional features that come set up by default are not really optional unless they're opt-in from the start. Most users are not savvy enough to figure out how to disable that kind of stuff.
I would say it’s worse than that. Like knowing that you are selling exp boosters changes the calculus on how exp is earned. If the game played smoothly, there would be no need to sell the boosters and creating the eco system to support it would have been wasted. A system where certain items are nft based would push for these items to be better then the non nft items both for expectation of value, and to raise the trade value to siphon from. This already happens with games with dlc cosmetics. The gear in the games looks increasingly shit compared to the DLC. And that is a natural consequence of polluting the game space.
Linux is free and open source software ecosystem. It's like handing people free brushes, canvases and paints - sure, removing the financial hurdles may enable talents otherwise unable to afford indulging their artistic streak, but you also can't really prevent anyone from painting awful bullshit. Best you can do is not give them attention or a platform to advertise their stuff on.
That's the price of freedom: It also extends to assholes. We can't start walling off Linux, so the best we can do is individually wall them off from our own life and hope enough other people around us do it too.
It looks like the picture in that article is upside down judging by the devices logo on the screen. Are the analog sticks above the d pad and buttons?
Everything about that device confuses me.
That's pretty cool. Square Enix is one of the better AAA-publishers when it comes to Linux support, they had native ports for Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, Hitman and a bunch more.
I'm not sure about the others, but I'm pretty sure Hitman isn't linux native.
As far as I can find on protondb, neither are Deus Ex or Tomb Raider.
I've never had any issues running those games through Proton though, so that's great.
Although this game has a Linux-native build available, Steam does not list it as having Linux support. This can happen if a game has an unofficial, unfinished, or unsupported build. You may need to force Steam to enable Proton for the game in order to run properly.
https://www.protondb.com/app/203160
Square where early adopters of Linux back when Steam Machines V1 came out commissioning ports for a bunch of their Eidos (western) IPs. And then they stopped support for those ports when Proton came around
According to Wikipedia, Deus Ex MD, Hitman, Life is Strange 1&2, and the new Tomb Raider trilogy all have native Linux ports.
I’m not really into PC gaming, but the more gaming possibilities you have on Linux, the better it’ll be👍
"There's no login screen, how do I unlock it?"
"It's square enix, they expect you to have a keyblade"
Those of pure enough heart to weild a Keyblade will know how to login - all you need to do is trust your heart, and follow the light!
I was all set to re purchase the original ff7 on steam to play it again on my steam deck. Then I seen that the assholes require an internet connection to run it. My playstation sure as hell didn't have an internet connection. Yo ho ho ho
Additionally, the first Alpha version of PlaytronOS has now been released for those of you who wish to test and give feedback. So far they note it has been tested across the AYANEO 2, ASUS ROG Ally, GPD Win 4 (2023), Lenovo Legion Go, Valve Steam Deck LCD and Valve Steam Deck OLED.
Quite a nice list of tested handhelds.
The main benefit of web3 "games" is that a dev can make millions from something with PS2 graphics, recycled assets and zero innovation
i'll do my own css framework!
not because it makes sense, but because of godcomplex.
/s
It's bazzite with a custom UI instead of Steam Big Picture and no desktop mode. Their big claim seems to be that they say that they have solved anti cheat on Linux: the system generates a checksum of the kernel space, the anti cheat then compares this checksum with the one on file. No custom kernel module needed on the part of the anti cheat dev. At least in theory.
I'm interested in them finding a way to get AC working, but I really dislike this method of doing so. There are a ton of kernel variations, so this would really only work on specific distros and devices. This becoming standard would likely mean being unable to use optimized kernels, different schedulers, and other kernel modules like the ZFS drivers.
I'm having a hard time understanding how this would work. udev will load kernel modules depending on your hardware, and these modules run in kernel space. Is there an assumption that a kernel module can't cheat? Or do they have a checksum for each possible kernel module that can be loaded?
Also, how do they read the kernel space code? Userspace can't do this afaik. Do they load a custom kernel module to do this? Who says it can't just be replaced with a module that returns the "right" checksum?
Here is the quote I paraphrased in my comment (I'm sure I got something wrong):
The immutable file system from Fedora Silverblue will be very helpful in implementing our anti cheat system but it is not our anti cheat system. We are planning to generate signatures for each version of our OS (easy with Silverblue) as well as all the DLLs we install dynamically. Basically using our SDK, a game developer will be able to obtain a signature of the current config on the device then call our backend to verify that this is a genuine Playtron version.
Ah, so they don't actually say that they read kernel space. They check the version of all installed packages and checksum the installed DLLs/SOs.
If the user still has root privileges, this may still not prevent sideloading of kernel modules. Even if it would detect a kernel module that has been sideloaded, I believe it's possible to write a kernel module that will still be resident after you unload it. This kernel module can then basically do anything without the knowledge of userspace. It could for example easily replace any code running in userspace, and their anticheat would miss that as it doesn't actually check what code is currently running. Most simply, code could be injected that skips the anticheat.
Of course, in their model, if a user isn't given root privileges it seems much harder to do anything, then probably the first thing you'd want to look for is a privilege escalation attack to obtain root privileges. This might not be that hard if they for example run Xorg as it isn't known to be the most secure - there's a reason there's a strong recommendation to not run any graphical UI on servers.
Another way if you don't have root is to simply run the code on a system that does but that does have such a kernel module - or perhaps modify the binary itself to skip the anticheat. I don't see anything preventing that in their scheme.
Anti-cheat doesn't actually need to eliminate cheating, it just needs to make the masses think it works by slightly raising the bar for entry into cheating. Cheating is still rampant, players just feel better about it and complain about smurfs more because they dont think its possible to get around kernal level anti-cheats.
Honestly I'd be much happier if the industry moved away form terrible anti-cheat software in general.
I wish more people understood this: Riot's anti-cheat isn't perfect and you can find how to cheat online fairly easily actually, but you have to jump over so many hoops and spend a fair amount of cash to do it (depending on method) that it's basically an exercise for motivated hackers that want to prove a point, not your script kiddie that wants easy wins.
Exactly. The average Joe sees he can't just download hacks and suddenly be good, assumes the anti-cheat works, and then when they still get owned complains about something else instead of cheaters and is happily giving shady game publishers the highest level access to their computer like its nothing.
I was discussing this a few months back; an immutable fs is way more secure for gaming compared to Windows.
Finally! Some competition with Steam OS! Hopefully only good things will come out of this!
It sure is easy to grift squeenix out of their money nowadays, eh? I think I'll start some new blockchain project, market it to whoever's their CEO, get rich and get out.
