RobotCache A Blockchain based Game Distribution platform

[The Benjamins]

Quote

This came out of nowhere. Robot Cache is a new “decentralized” game distribution platform powered by blockchain technology that’s going to allow reduced fees for publishers and the ability for customers to resell their digital PC games.

https://wccftech.com/robot-cache-game-distribution-blockchain/

https://www.robotcache.com/

 

White Paper

https://robotcache.com/docs/WhitePaper.pdf

 

Quote

WE'RE DISRUPTING THE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY. COME JOIN US
It’s not often that opportunities arise to disrupt the $27 billion a year PC video games market.  Currently, just a handful of companies dominate the digital download business for PC video games.
Now, as the industry’s first-ever decentralized video game distribution platform, we’re dramatically reducing the fees publishers pay by 80% and for the first time ever, allowing gamers to resell their digital PC video games.

 

Higher Margins
Publishers take a lot of risk and should get most of the reward.  The standard distribution fee of 30% paid by publishers is reduced to 5% on our platform.

Game Resales
Resales of video games will generate incremental income for the publishers, while allowing gamers an opportunity to resell games when they finish playing.

Token Mining
Gamers can put their gaming PC to good use by opting-in to mine cryptocurrencies and be rewarded Robot Cache’s IRON tokens (IRON) for mining.

Token Ecosystem
Proceeds from the resale of games likely stay in the ecosystem and generate more game purchases on the Robot Cache platform

 

This will run on the Ethereum network, and will be fully functional Q2 of this year. I really love seeming platforms built on top of the block chain technology, I hope this brings a great way to distribute non DRM games to the masses. The biggest issue I see is that games would have to be bought with a crypto currency over the more excepted fiat currencies.

 

 

Timeline

INSTITUTIONAL PRESALE
Jan 17th – Feb 14th
ACCREDITED PUBLIC PRESALE
Feb 15th – Mar 1st
TOKEN GENERATION EVENT
Q2 – 2018

 

TOKEN SALE STRUCTURE
Total IRON Supply – 300M
TOKEN: IRON
SOFT CAP: $15M
HARD CAP: TBD
TOKEN SALE ALLOCATION: 105M
INSTITUTIONAL PRE-SALE MIN PURCHASE: $500K

INSTITUTIONAL PRESALE DISCOUNT: Up to 50%
ACCREDITED PUBLIC PRESALE MIN AMT: $50K
ACCREDITED PUBLIC PRESALE DISCOUNT: Up to 25%
 

[TheGlenlivet]

can I mine it on my nintendo...?

[Dissitesuxba11s]

15 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

The standard distribution fee of 30% paid by publishers is reduced to 5% on our platform.

I didn't know that publisher fees were that high. 

 

15 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

Game Resales

Now this is the game changer. I wonder how they price the resale value of games and will the resellers be paid in IRON or in their preferred currency?

[The Benjamins]

3 minutes ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

I didn't know that publisher fees were that high. 

 

Now this is the game changer. I wonder how they price the resale value of games and will the resellers be paid in IRON or in their preferred currency?

 

It is all in IRON, the seller gets 25% the publisher gets 70% and the platform takes 5%. I am not sure if the seller sets the price or not.

[Orcblood]

Well this would of came in handy in my PC gamer infancy when I wasn't sure what games where good. Now I know what I like and have methods of finding if a game is good prior to purchasing. Guess this would only come in handy for those games that are alot of fun but have little replay value. Like Inside.

[Dissitesuxba11s]

8 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

 

It is all in IRON, the seller gets 25% the publisher gets 70% and the platform takes 5%. I am not sure if the seller sets the price or not.

I think that that will be the factor that will make or break this platform. They would have to make it so that users can buy IRON directly with their choice of currency (USD, CAN, etc) simply because of ease of use. A gamer doesn't want to wait for the transaction to be verified just to play a game. And they certainly do not want to have to buy ETH from Coinbase (example), transfer to an exchange, buy IRON, transfer to RobotCache and finally buy the game.

[PocketNerd]

Where are the game files being stored?

[The Benjamins]

11 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

Where are the game files being stored?

That i am not sure about, I think we will get more info later

[Ryujin2003]

Not sure why EA or Activision didn't patent this first... Block chain; now with micro transactions...

[PCMasterDebater]

Not sure why anyone is excited. The inclusion of mining with this platform indicates a pyramid scheme of sorts. A few will be rich, while the rest will be digging trying to make a few cents.

 

Good luck for those that join it.

[The Benjamins]

2 minutes ago, PCMasterDebater said:

Not sure why anyone is excited. The inclusion of mining with this platform indicates a pyramid scheme of sorts. A few will be rich, while the rest will be digging trying to make a few cents.

 

Good luck for those that join it.

The point is not to mine, the point is the decentralize distribution platform, but due to the nature of it running on the blockchain it was going to have its own coin. and since each user will have the "wallet" on their machine why not build in a way to mine the coin.

 

they never claimed you will be mining to buy all your games, just you can do that to save a bit of money on BUYING games.

 

The product is not the coin but the platform, just like SiaCoin. The SiaCoin devs don't care about the coin, they just need it to utilize the service they provide.

[2FA]

5 minutes ago, Sampsy said:

I suppose i'm probably not the best informed on the matter. But how exactly is "blockchain technology" actually used here? And how is it helpful?

 

I can't see how any of the selling points (i.e. lower fees, allowing reselling) need "blockchain technology" to work. It's just that firms like Valve charge ~ 30% because they can and they probably don't want to allow reselling in the first place, rather than it being a technical issue.

 

Oh and of course this is yet another company trying to convince people their made up cryptocurrency is worth something.

I'm going to take a jab and say that game data is stored in the blocks (hence distribution part) but we won't know for sure until they release their white paper (which they honestly should have already with this type of thing, the fact that they haven't is sketchy to me).

 

EDIT: Found it https://robotcache.com/docs/WhitePaper.pdf

[The Benjamins]

2 minutes ago, Sampsy said:

I suppose i'm probably not the best informed on the matter. But how exactly is "blockchain technology" actually used here? And how is it helpful?

 

I can't see how any of the selling points (i.e. lower fees, allowing reselling) need "blockchain technology" to work. It's just that firms like Valve charge ~ 30% because they can and they probably don't want to allow reselling in the first place, rather than it being a technical issue.

 

Oh and of course this is yet another company trying to convince people their made up cryptocurrency is worth something. Horay!

so the use of the blockchain here, is that instead of a centralized server tracking who owns what game, the decentralized nature of the blockchain handles that. meaning this system will not need a "company" to manage everything, it will be come self staining, like how no government/company runs BTC.

 

Think of it like steam but with out valve needed to maintain it.

[2FA]

Okay, their whole press release is incredibly misleading. This is a blockchain game license management platform, the game data itself is not on blockchain as far I can tell reading the whitepaper.

 

From the whitepaper:

Quote

Robot Cache intends to leverage the growing distributed storage technology space by partnering with one or more providers, which will provide the lowest cost to store and download games for gamers and developers, while simultaneously supporting a robust blockchain environment. Therefore, even the games themselves are decentralized and the content will always be available to gamers and publishers.

 

All PC video games made available on the Robot Cache platform will automatically be copied into a distributed storage account, and any game removed from the Robot Cache platform will be removed from the storage account. Downloading a game from the Robot Cache game cloud will be indistinguishable from a game being downloaded or purchased in any other way.

The only new thing about this is the license management, many other game platforms already use P2P distribution.

[MyName13]

So why does this need block chain?Why would publishers want to give away free copies to miners who make enough coins?

[mr moose]

45 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

So why does this need block chain?Why would publishers want to give away free copies to miners who make enough coins?

 

If I'm reading this right, they are going to use blockchain instead of cd keys.  That way game developers can track any game they sell and when it gets resold.  It's like using blockchain for DRM. 

 

This isn't a distribution system for the actual data, this is a DRM system for tracking each license bought and resold.  

 

 

However, I know we are in for a world of pain when tech enthusiasts get excited over the idea of decentralizing game distribution on what is already a decentralized platform (the internet).

[yian88]

How do i use this when it goes live? this is always a mystery to me about blockchain tech it doesnt come with guides for simple people, hence the adoption will be mostly among techies.

Is there any guide on how to use this service?

Does it accept paypal, im not paying anything on any crypto network with my CC directly.

[The Benjamins]

24 minutes ago, yian88 said:

How do i use this when it goes live? this is always a mystery to me about blockchain tech it doesnt come with guides for simple people, hence the adoption will be mostly among techies.

Is there any guide on how to use this service?

Does it accept paypal, im not paying anything on any crypto network with my CC directly.

well I am not sure how it all works yet, but I can tell you when I have access to it.

 

also you almost can't buy crypto with a CC, CC are not secure enough. most places like coin base deal with bank transfers. (coinbase now allows CC with restrictions and ID verification and extra fees)

[MyName13]

7 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

If I'm reading this right, they are going to use blockchain instead of cd keys.  That way game developers can track any game they sell and when it gets resold.  It's like using blockchain for DRM. 

 

This isn't a distribution system for the actual data, this is a DRM system for tracking each license bought and resold.  

 

 

However, I know we are in for a world of pain when tech enthusiasts get excited over the idea of decentralizing game distribution on what is already a decentralized platform (the internet).

So what's the point?Why would publishers need to know this?Can't they already know this on Steam?Anyway, can internet really be called a "decentralized platform"?It still depends on ISPs, backbones and DNSs.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, MyName13 said:

So what's the point?Why would publishers need to know this?Can't they already know this on Steam?Anyway, can internet really be called a "decentralized platform"?It still depends on ISPs, backbones and DNSs.

There is no real one governing authority on the internet as far as who can transfer data.  Yes we are dependent on ISP's etc, but then block chain is also dependent on those, and on people on the network. You or I can use p2p to distribute files anytime we want.  I cant really see how this is beneficial for distributing software.

 

 

[mr moose]

Another point I was was pondering whilst offline,  How does this service effect consumer law.  By the sound of it you can only sell your game through their network receiving their coin for spending in their store.  Is this system (if it takes of) going to make it possible to resell a game (which it already should be under current law) but impossible to sell it for conventional currency?   I can see steam adding a "sell a game" feature.  Which would virtually ruin the only benefit to this service for consumers.

[MrDynamicMan]

This seems incredibly pointless. Its a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. "Whooo weee remember when steam lost all its transaction logs" said nobody ever. It's just a game distribution platform trying to grab headlines and potential customers by hopping on the .com blockchain buzz.