Even more reason for me to not want to be involved in the actual trading part.
> There is nothing in NFTs that protect companies using it to be above regulations.
Sure! The crypto-bros are wrong that there aren't/can't be regulations on these things, as are those complaining it's an unregulated area.
> I don't know, I don't work on the space. Leveraging from my 20 years of career I'd say that it's never trivial to integrate with a 3rd party for any kind of complex business logic.
This isn't complex business logic, that's my point. There's _already_ a standardised API. As I've said, there are annoying differences, but they are for more complex use cases and "read public data" is about the simplest there is.
To break it down a bit more, you utilise two key things. One is the standard API that all nodes have (https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/apis/json-rpc/) which acts the same for the use case here. There are public ones, you can pay a company to run one and you can if you want run one yourself. The end user can be free to swap between any of these.
The interface there isn't so nice, as you can ask for data stored somewhere, but finding exactly what address to read isn't that nice. Helpfully it's extremely generic so you can use a library to help with that step. You would do something like this in python:
web3 = Web3(node_provider_url)
my_contract = w3.eth.contract(abi=my_abi, address=my_contract_address)
print(my_contract.functions.my_read_only_function().call())
That's it. You're pulling from a shared database.
I hope that helps explain it a bit more - the API/backend stuff is generic and doesn't have to be run by you. However the only real external piece here is the storage layer - you're still in control of the data structure & functions (you write the contract). You're not relying on a third party to manage a "game item" API and hoping they don't change it, if you use a third party here it's about paying someone to run an open source project for you on their hardware.
What makes you believe there won't be regulations on trading NFTs in the future? The moment NFTs become an instrument for money laundering you're going to end up with the same KYC regulations as any other financial instrument. There is nothing in NFTs that protect companies using it to be above regulations. They simply don't exist yet which doesn't mean they won't ever come. There is money in this, there will be regulations and major companies will have to abide by them.
> Building the integration with the game doesn't sound hard, no, and it's the same either way. Authenticate, call API to check ownership - beyond that it's down to your game. (edit - to be clear here, the API already exists, I'm not saying "build a generic API" but "use an existing, highly interchangeable service")
> What about this do you think is going to be the tricky part? Authenticating the user? Checking if that account currently owns the NFT?
I don't know, I don't work on the space. Leveraging from my 20 years of career I'd say that it's never trivial to integrate with a 3rd party for any kind of complex business logic.
Like never in never ever, I've never seen it be just a case of "call this API, save some data" and that's why I have this instant reaction that you're glossing over a part that isn't that trivial. Even if the APIs exist, are generic, etc., integration is the hard part.