A Sony patent has appeared online, allowing the company to learn how to track the timeline of in-game objects — skins, characters and items. The patent was filed on May 7, 2021, but was published only on November 10, 2022.

Side note: Sony buys mobile studio Savage Game.

About Sony

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The company develops audio, video, communications and information technology products for consumer and professional markets. Sony combines consumer electronics and well-known brands — Walkman, Vaio, Xperia, Cybershot, Alpha and PlayStation.

Today, Sony has six business segments: electronics, games, devices, semiconductors, entertainment content and financial services.

More about the patent

Source: Company patent

The patent deals with a method and system for tracking digital assets related to video games. Digital assets are in-game assets, such as items and characters. There are also video game digital media assets, which represent moments of gameplay — video clips or images.

When a digital asset is created, a separate record appears and is stored on devices.

The digital asset’s unique token includes an identifier and metadata defining its properties. Changes to digital asset properties, such as ownership, appearance, or metadata, are identified in the update request. The new block is generated and added to a unique database that recognizes changes to the digital asset. The new block also includes hashes of previous blocks.

In the patent, Sony indicated that in-game objects in copies of the same game from different users are not different from each other in terms of code. However, the use of such things may not be the same. For example, one player didn’t use the object, while another player won with that object in a cybersport tournament. Sony’s technology is supposed to be able to distinguish such cases.

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