> The axie infinity model looks alright. There is verifiable work in breeding the axies.

Still doesn't seem to require a blockchain. Axie Infinity decides whether assets (on-chain or not) are compatible with their game. That means the control over (and value of) the assets are centralized with the game devs anyway.

Why does it need to be an NFT thought rather than some centralized ledger. It's the distributed, no trust nature of this that I don't get in video games. Games have a developer and publisher and (sadly) generally centralized servers. Why add in distributed cosmetics?

> The axie infinity model looks alright

The Axie Infinity model is verifiably unsustainable and doesn't even generate income unless the game is actively growing. Demand for SLP depends on demand for breeding which in turn is dependent on demand for new users, it's not a pretty picture.

https://twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/1459191090100244483

i am not referring the game's tokenomics. Just saying why NFTs would be useful here. Proof of breeding and lineage is important for Pokemon-lite games.

Does it really make any sense though? Why is a decentralized ledger of any value to them?

The value to Ubisoft? It is to extract more money from the customer. From the technical perspective I suppose they know pretty well that they could have done the whole "unique" items including a marketplace using "traditional" tech instead of... this.

The secondary market and they don’t have to touch any of the regulations around handling real money if they were to run this themselves. F2P games with their own virtual currencies don’t usually let players cash out for the latter reason.

What value is the secondary market to them? Or allowing their players to "cash out"?

They can take a cut of every secondary market transaction and players need to be able to cash out for a secondary market to make sense. The main reason for not doing that centrally is it becomes an attractive means of money laundering which Valve found out with their skins. Second Life also had this problem and IIRC a third party company handles all their game related banking business as a result.

Note I’m not saying this is a good thing and I think all the entities involved should have the same regulatory responsibility but you can see the greasy cogs whirring in some executives brain.

How does it being decentralized make it unattractive for money laundering?

It doesn’t. Crypto is famously massively popular for money laundering. It just makes it not Ubisoft’s problem in the same way Valve farmed out the risk and responsibility to third party skin sites. Similarly Second Life dealt with this more ethically by engaging a partner to deal with the regulatory side of things

It’s also not a claim I made so I’m not sure why you addressed that question to me.

I addressed the question to you because I thought that was what you were saying: that somehow the involvement of a decentralized ledger made money laundering less attractive. Your description of the actual reasoning, that it shifts the burden of responsibility, makes a lot more sense.

In which case I apologise for not being clearer the first time.

They want the game to be governed, patched, etc. by the community eventually via a DAO. I think you needed a decentralized ledger for that, but as of right now, I think you are correct in that a decentralized ledger is not so useful.