Is originality still a thing? It feels as if every big corporation has headed down the same path – squeezing out every drop from the NFT cash cow before it drops dead. PlayStation is the latest company worth over $100 billion to start shilling its own NFTs. Why? Money. It’s toyed with the idea before with PlayStation Stars – NFTs that aren’t “officially” NFTs. That could be changing soon, however.
The patent was initially filed last year, though it was only published last week according to Video Game Chronicle. Titled ‘Tracking Unique In-Game Digital Assets Using Tokens on a Distributed Ledger’, it details a system that could be used to track digital assets within games. These assets can be created, used, modified, and transferred in-game.
The patent suggests that the system may be used to verify NFTs created by players and content creators. Almost everything can be an NFT under the patent’s description. Skins, characters, in-game items, cutscenes, audio clips, and images are all set to be included as usable assets. Players and content creators would have the ability to buy, sell or even rent these digital assets out to other players.
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“The techniques and technologies described herein expand the functionality of digital assets associated with video games, and of systems that create and manage such digital assets, by tracking a history of the digital assets. Tracking the history of the digital assets can include, for example, tracking when, how, and by whom the digital asset was created, used, modified, rented to, rented by, sold to, purchased by, licensed to, licensed by, exchanged to, exchanged by, and/or other actions,” reads the patent.
It’s possible that this patent could stay in the PlayStation vault, never to be used. But it’s clear that PlayStation has the idea in its head. Whether it can hold off on scamming its fanbase for the foreseeable future remains to be seen.
Source: Digital Trends