I had this idea for a limited edition game. Which only 5 copies of the game will ever be made. But people could sell their copy to other people using a block chain.
But how would you encode content into the coin so-to-speak?
How about if the code of the game is encoded with a key, and only parts of it are decoded at any time. This would make it very difficult to copy the game.
It also might be a way to sell procedural artworks that can only be owned by one person at a time.
Just an idea.
That actually is a nifty idea. I donât have a strong understanding how the block chain stuff really works, but I imagine thatâd be overkill for just passing around 5 copies of a game though. 
I think the idea behind a block chain being able to confirm the transactions relies on there being many⌠many people who are âminingâ at this block chain, and solving to make sure the transactions all are accurate. So that means if there is only 5 copies total⌠a pretty small audience of people would have to fight over that limited amount of copies. (unless its bitcoin like and you can have 0.1 copies haha)
Besides - unless it was really tightly linked to the block chain, theyâd find way to pirate it.
Yeah. Good point. I forgot about the miners!
I think images and screenshots would be easy to pirate. But maybe the code itself could somehow be decrypted at runtime by a personal key. Everybodyâs game might be encoded with a different key. So only the person with the key could run it.
I kind of like the idea of creating a mining game where you mine for a chance at one of a handful of copies of the real game 
I think itâd make much more sense to be like 1000 copies of the game, and you can mine for partials of a copy (0.01 copy or whatever) and when you have a complete copy (over 1.0 mined/bought) you can then play the game somehow?
I dunno how in the world youâd code it
Think of it as a shared public ledger that you have to hash the entries for. If your hashes do not match the other ledgers then you are a counterfeit or fraud. I have a better way to use blockchain tech that will mine coin for both devs and players. I wish I had time to implement it but am up to my ears in pleasing venture capitalists at the moment.
Letâs temporarily ignore the technical challenges of this idea and just consider the business position of this.
What would the value be for the dev to implement a game that intentionally limited the number of copies? It might create a bubble and allow gamers to make money inflating the value of the game over time, but the original developer would not make any money from that inflation. And it would not be a viable strategy for multiplayer games, since it would lead to empty servers.
One cool thing about modern games is that many people can buy an awesome game for a relatively low price. For example, a game may cost many millions of dollars to create and then sell for $60 to each player. And while $60 is a high price for a game, it is a tiny fraction of the actual cost for creating a given game. If you only sold 5 copies of a game, it would definitely limit the amount of resources that could go into the game, because it is very unlikely a developer would be able to get each of those 5 players to commit millions of dollars to own a limited edition AAA game.
What is the use case for this idea?
It will have to be an awesome, incredible game. Many, many games are free and canât get downloads. Itâs unlikely there would ba convergence of team/developers that could create an amazing game, and one that be will to try something like this. Besides, it would likely be cracked quickly if it were a actually a good game people were interested in.
It is possible to write a proxy dll that will intercept all system calls the game makes. It is possible then to see what server your game is talking to, and what kind of requests it makes (actually this is possible without proxy dll). It is possible then to use said proxy dll to override system calls related to authentificiation, fool the game into thinking that it is talking with your blockchain server, replace related communication calls with fakes, feed it fake responses instead of actual server replies, and make unlimited copies of it.
Basically, ALL software somebody can run on a machine they have physical access to is hackable, and thereâs not a damn thing you can do about it.
OVerall, it reminds me of that story about âone of a kindâ wutang album.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Shaolin
And the dude who bought it sharing its intro for free.
If you want to make a game that cannot be duplicated, youâll need to make it a real hardware with anti-tampering devices, or something akin to mechanical pong .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmBav87U_hA
Or âMegaProcessorâ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNa9bQRPMB8
This is the stuff you canât easily duplicate due to material costs involved. Not something that uses blockchain-based DRM.
Another similar idea is âFlockâ, available on steam. Complete flop.
Blockchain does not work like that. You have to hack every ledger and make them all agree with each and every transaction. Not gonna happen. The trick in your analysis conditional is âa machineâ. Not a network of machines.
You donât need to hack the block chain, just the game. Blockchain != drm.
What if playing a game was mining, remember mining is just a algorithm or maths puzzle chosen to be taxing to CPU/GPU/ASIC processors instead of doing all that abstract work your computer and you could be playing a game.
Then the transactions in the block chain are gaming sessions!?
Or would you be paying your players with your game for playing your game?
Based on description in original post, the only thing that will need to be hacked is the piece of software running on userâs machine, and not blockchain itself.
At some point there going to be a check âis user allowed to run the gameâ? That point will be hackable.
If the game downloads data from blockchain, that point is going to be hackable as well.
Even if the user is receiving data from encrypted source, because it is done on machine that the user has physical access to, it means that decrypted data is going to be accessible via techniques like proxy dll.
Unless the game is blockchain node based e.g. it runs on a blockchain node servers distributed as âminingâ!
That is sort of what that cat thing is, but it isnât really a game. Running an actual, real game like that is impractical at best.
What you would do is keep one game for yourself. So that if the value of the game went into a bubble you could then sell your game at inflated prices!
I mean, probably easier to sell a million games than ten and hope itâs price increases by a a hundred thousand times! But just a thought!
The blockchain is a hashed and serialed, shared ledger. You just cannot insert a transaction that has not been verified on the blockchain network. Any ledger that does not agree with the others is bogus and unauthorized. Real simple. Hack away to achieve being booted. Go ahead and hack your bank book. The bank ledger will not agree.
But when it comes to copy protection the metaphorical bank doesnât have to agree. Itâs a local copy of the game deciding whether it should run or not. It can just be modified so that it doesnât even ask the âbankâ.
Have you ever tried to hack a piece of software before?
In this particular scenario, It doesnât matter what blockchain is.
All code that is executed on a machine a user has physical access to can be hacked.
All data that goes through machine a user has physical access to can be stolen and altered, before program receives it.
in this scneario, it is simply one more copy protection mechanism. The game decides - locally - whether it is allowed to run or not. And the user with physical access to the computer where the program is running can modify it that it always decides that âyes, it is allowed to runâ. It doesnât matter what is used for the check.
Even if it actually downloads data from blockchain, the data can be intercepted and recordded, and then the software can be decoupled from the blockchain.
And, by the way⌠people can simply decide to publicly share the wallet that has the game access and make it available to everybody. The wallet doesnât have to belong to one user, you know?
So, to make it hard to copy, make it mechanical pong and booby-trap it with explosives. That will be more efficient.
Hack the game all you want. Whatever reward you expect is not forthcoming due to the ledger not agreeing with the network ledger. If it agrees with the ledger and you have hacked the gameâŚbig, dirty rotten frikkinâ deal. You donât get no prize because when you rejoin the network your ledger is not synched to the hash that the entire network calculated, agreed upon and logged with a timestamp⌠Penalty of 15 yards for an offside. The game would not be the prize. The blockchain hash would be as with all other digital currency. Your idea is the equivalent of scribbling the winning number on a lotto ticket.
I can hack the mechanical pong the same way with my Ruger TP 100 from 50 meters.