Nothing more disappointing to me than seeing a game I might enjoy… and then it’s only available on PC on Epic Games store. Why can’t it be available on Epic, Xbox game store and Steam? It’s so annoying, like you have no choice but to use Epic… which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.
Federated marketplace protocol really should happen at some point.
Like, it seems like a very clear solution to an online monopoly risk. Maybe I’m wrong, though.
Main problem I see is payments
It also sounds like a cheater’s paradise.
What do you mean by ‘cheater’? Like ‘scammer’?
Like people who would otherwise get banned from a platform for cheating in games. Tracking that down is so much more complicated/impossible with federation. In other words it makes ban evasion super easy. See also: email spam.
Each server would likely have to utilize a payment service. In that fashion it’d be no different than how stores host their own websites you can order from. In my mind, the federated protocol would simply be a means for a person to browse stores similar to how one can navigate a mall or market.
For games, the further benefit after would be that via a client of the protocol, you could then download your games from the various stores in a singular library page.
Surely we’ve learned by now that decentralization and markets don’t mix well
I’m not following.
Markets were originally decentralized, and while that has its problems, a decentralized market is miles better than a monopolized market.
Like, are you thinking of Etsy or Amazon or something? Because those are all run by a single point-of-sales and logistics collectives.
What we’re talking about is basically building a means for getting all the websites around the web of small shops and such (or in this case all the various game store fronts like steam, itch.io, GOG, and EPIC GAMES) and giving you client which allows you to browse and order from them simultaneously. All that store’d have to do is add the protocol to their server and add themselves to a list.