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I've gotten this question from a lot of #GameDev: "How can I, a game developer, make use of ATProto in my games?" So I wrote an article to address my work in a way that makes more sense for game developers, especially those that don't know (or care) about ATProto.

birb.houseBuilding the Future of Games on ATProto | Birbhouse GamesGame platforms hold too much power over developers. We want to change that by decentralizing games with ATProto — devs own their data, players own their progress, and no payment processor can take it ...

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I generally like the idea of "data ownership" and decentralisation here, but it comes with some concerns of mine, still - which are technically (oh god I can see the bots coming already) are somewhat addressed by blockchains: how do we prevent players from just _saying_ they have savegame xyz?

I think you would still need some authority (aka centralised thing) to "sign" your game data that prevents others from copying your state of a game. Maybe add support for dedicated Servers or "other entities" to distribute this verification? Such verification would then bring us back to square 1...

, making save game data potentially more "readable", but not necessarily "usable" after the signature Server/Authority is abandoned. If people are given the chance to change their save game data arbitrarily, they will. Which sucks for competitive integrity. Great for freedom, bad for integrity.

Maybe bake it intoo the SDK you are building to HAVE an "authority" that CAN sign a player's data (PGP/GPG?) but have support for clearly-labeled "unverified data" in there, or to make "private servers" easily host their own "verification". And I think you want signatures, not encryption.

If it's a Single-Player game and not in a speedrunning or other competitive context: Perfectly fine. As soon as you have Leaderboards or are looking to verify things for speedruns: if people are given access to fabricate high scores, they will. Many people do not know how to create arbitrary...

...ATProto data, so the "normal user" won't care. But if it becomes the standard, it should have some form of verification built-in. See also how people can easily edit their Pokémon save files, but "generated Pokémon" are not allowed for competitive play.

Very cool! Always dreamt of a decentralised steam alternative. Would be very fun to build a client for if the goal is to really open up the protocol. Do you have a github repo where we can do RFCs?

I have a repo for the lexicons that will work for protocol RFCs! I’d love to see other clients building on this work. 😁 If you’re serious, DM me (here or @trezy on Discord) and let’s talk!

Ooooh, right, I mentioned a few folks in the article. I 100% confused you with @matttwood.dev. 😅 So, ACTUALLY, thank you for contributing to the conversation around this work! 🥰