AMD and Industry Partners to Develop New Blockchain-based Gaming Platforms

[AleksandarK]

AMD today announced that it has joined the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) and forged partnerships with leading technology providers to help promote the development and proliferation of new blockchain-powered gaming platforms.

The Blockchain Game Alliance is committed to driving awareness and adoption of blockchain technologies within the game industry, providing an open forum for individuals and companies to share knowledge and collaborate, create common standards, establish best practices, and network. As the first major hardware manufacturer to join the BGA, AMD plans to enable alliance members with efficient and high-performance computing technologies for next-generation blockchain-based gaming platforms that could potentially transform the way games are created, published, purchased and played.


AMD also announced partnerships with leading blockchain technology providers, Robot Cache, which launched their online gaming marketplace in June, and ULTRA, which plans to launch its online gaming marketplace in the coming months. Designed to provide optimal cryptographic compute performance with AMD Ryzen processors and AMD Radeon graphics cards, these marketplaces will provide gamers with new opportunities to buy, sell and share digital video games, as well as offer efficient, new distribution channels for publishers. In addition, Robot Cache will use secure, high-performance AMD EPYC processors in the back-end servers powering its platform, and ULTRA will use AMD EPYC processors for its blockchain to facilitate block producing.

"Blockchain technology brings broader choice, security and flexibility to both gamers and publishers," said Joerg Roskowetz, Head of Blockchain Technology, AMD. "Next-generation blockchain game platforms will give gamers access to exclusive online content, and provide new ways for them to truly own it. They will also provide game publishers with new channels to distribute digital game content."

"The Blockchain Game Alliance is gathering some of the world's top blockchain innovators and content developers to bring players the best of what this technology has to offer," said Nicolas Pouard, Blockchain Initiative Director at Ubisoft. "We're delighted to work with AMD, and other alliance members to determine the role of blockchain in the entertainment experiences of the future."

Leading the Blockchain Gaming Charge
Providing incredible compute performance and security for peer-to-peer transactions, AMD is helping to enable the next generation of blockchain-based gaming platforms via:

• Blockchain Innovation - AMD is at the forefront of the blockchain evolution, providing the underlying compute technology to enable a broad range of new blockchain-powered applications, services and use cases spanning industries ranging from gaming and cloud computing to the Internet of Things, healthcare, and others.
• Efficient, High-performance CPUs and GPUs - AMD is in a unique position to offer the best combination of high-performance CPUs and GPUs for demanding blockchain workloads.
• Robust Security - Designed to address today's increasingly complex and sophisticated security threats, AMD Secure Technology puts protection right on the processor providing an additional layer of robust security.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[The Egg]

Okay.... I read through this news post and then went back and scanned through it multiple times. Nowhere does it explain what the heck blockchain has to do with gaming. For whatever reason, this article/news release just assumes the reader has additional knowledge about an obscure subject, and fails to even explain the basics of what the hell it’s talking about.

 

[sutyi]

Okay.... I read through this news post and then went back and scanned through it multiple times. Nowhere does it explain what the heck blockchain has to do with gaming. For whatever reason, this article/news release just assumes the reader has additional knowledge about an obscure subject, and fails to even explain the basics of what the hell it’s talking about.

From a security and anti-fraud stand-point I can see this working on item trading platforms. For anything else that is not a new crypto currency with a 3D engine layered on top and calling it a game... dunno.

 

[mak1skav]

The only thing I can see is just another attempt to drive the GPU prices higher.

 

[silentbogo]

Nowhere does it explain what the heck blockchain has to do with gaming.

One word. Microtransactions.
Crytek Kiev already failed at their Ethereum-based implementation, others didn't go further than a drawing board, so I don't see this going anywhere either.

 

[Vayra86]

Okay.... I read through this news post and then went back and scanned through it multiple times. Nowhere does it explain what the heck blockchain has to do with gaming. For whatever reason, this article/news release just assumes the reader has additional knowledge about an obscure subject, and fails to even explain the basics of what the hell it’s talking about.

You assume ANYBODY knows this. I doubt that.

In many ways blockchain is a solution looking for problems

Somehow I get that typical 'AMD fail initiative' feeling again.

One word. Microtransactions.
Crytek Kiev already failed at their Ethereum-based implementation, others didn't go further than a drawing board, so I don't see this going anywhere either.

This assumes blockchain is going to somehow improve that in any way. Yet we don't see that in any financial transaction system anywhere yet. When the volume is small, blockchain's advantage is too limited to care about, and when it gets really big (over time), blockchain becomes a problem rather than an efficient solution.

The tech is useful for data authenticity, but common payment solutions already offer that.

 

[Chomiq]

Add this option to the poll "What the hell is blockchain?"

Edit.
Spelling correction changed it to blackchain...

 

[HD64G]

That might result in a new type of DRM not being able to decrypt. Let's hope it doesn't affect gaming performance as much as denuvo's solutions.

 

[Aquinus]

You know, this single pane out of xkcd #2030 feels ever so appropriate for just about any time someone thinks they have a good use for blockchain.

 

[notb]

Nowhere does it explain what the heck blockchain has to do with gaming.

Microtransactions and in-game trading in general (also P2P).

I went through the list of members and apart from AMD and Ubisoft there's not a single company that I've heard about.

BGA Company Directory – Blockchain Game Alliance

blockchaingamealliance.org

I checked a few and they all look like mobile game makers or crypto tech providers for this market.

There's even some dodgy naming going on - I can only assume "Web3 foundation" got some inspiration from W3C (WWW Consortium).

This is an example of a crypto-based game:

CryptoKitties - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Chrispy_]

You know, this single pane out of xkcd #2030 feels ever so appropriate for just about any time someone thinks they have a good use for blockchain.
View attachment 139512

Yes. Thank you!

I clicked on user comments just to post this xkcd and you saved me the effort.

 

[Aquinus]

Yes. Thank you!

I clicked on user comments just to post this xkcd and you saved me the effort.

It disgusts me because the idea of having chained cryptographic signatures is not a useless thing. What's useless is trying to apply it to things that arguably don't need it.

 

[medi01]

I recall a meeting with blockchain dudes at the company I work for.
Management felt they needed "to act' because new buzzword that brings very very VERY cool stuff to the table has appeared.
Techie meeting went like "come on, guys, seriously, why on earth would we use that". (ideas such as using BC when communicating with your suppliers)

It seems they are still trying to sell that wonderful stuff.

 

[notb]

It seems they are still trying to sell that wonderful stuff.

Cryptocurrencies don't solve any existing issues. There's no added value.

It's just a funky, alternative database idea for a very small class of problems.
And all the crypto startups (dozens of which are supporting this "platform") are in turbo selling mode, because few years from now quantum computers could make them obsolete in public Internet.

There's still the other side of the coin. Cryptos are super useful for crime, but they have to become widespread to make sense. It's very hard to launder a payment mean which isn't generally accepted.

 

[The Egg]

Nowhere does it explain what the heck blockchain has to do with gaming.

Microtransactions and in-game trading in general (also P2P).

Okay......but how, and why?

Actually, it's not your job to explain. Looks like there's close to 500 words in that BS-bingo press release, and it should have been explained within the first 2 paragraphs. It shouldn't take people in the comments section to explain the topic.

 

[silentbogo]

When the volume is small, blockchain's advantage is too limited to care about, and when it gets really big (over time), blockchain becomes a problem rather than an efficient solution.

It's not about the size or popularity. The concept is something alike to Stablecoins (fixed exchange rate tied to some predetermined FIAT), so for players it's like buying in-game currency.
Only this time it's decentralized, not bound by taxes, and can have lots of extended features based on smart contracts. The latter one is probably what interests companies the most, cause it's going to be trivial to implement a secure method for player2player transactions (e.g. selling cosmetics to some rando, or trading). This way they won't have to do jack shit and impose a blockchain fee for all transactions. This way they don't have to speak aloud anything along the lines "includes a $XXX transaction fee", and instead say that "this is how blockchain works". Same goes for tax evasion on small transactions.

BTW, just looked at CryCash again, just to satisfy my interest, and apparently they went back-ass-wards. Now it's used just for gambling: be it an illegal Telegram slot machine bot, or an easy way to bet on eSports - Crytek got you covered )))

 

[Deleted member 158293]

Why is there a need for a distributed ledger using blockchain for games? What does it do more than a central database in this use case?

There is at least one studio actively developing using Lightning channels for microtransactions, but these are purposefully offchain for instant processing since Lightning is actually faster than credit cards transactions for which actual validation of transactions are done hours later.

As for AMD, they just want to sell hardware so them being there makes some sense.

 

[Fluffmeister]

What a load of bollocks.

AMD were more than happy to sell every card they made to block chain pioneers so maybe that is what they are hoping for now.