I missed this Ann and only now I've heard of this project.
After reading the whitepaper I'm going to go ahead and call it a scam (not that in 7 pages anyone seem to care if this project could even work, people just seem to just blindly trust the project showing exactly what's wrong with ICOs).
First off, you can't possibly run already existing games in a decentralized manner. Running interactive games is not just 3D rendering, the game has to practically fully run on the "mining" machine including resources like CPU/RAM/storage.
And you can't run the majority of games multiple time (online DRM, 1 account/instance) so multiple miners running the same game for one player is impossible.
So it's already centralized in a sense that 1 miner = 1 player. And if that miner has issues the player will lose progress. The gamer would also want to play games on his account which would be hard to hide from the miner who would be running the game introducing security issues.
Streaming like Nvidia Shield or Steam Link works because they do so locally. The nvidia shield for example requires "50 Megabits per second – Recommended for 1080p 60 FPS quality" (source) which is easy to get on your local WiFi which probably have 70-100 Mbps speeds. Now players would need 50Mbps internet connection and miners would require 50Mbps
per game they "mine". You could say 720p 30fps is enough but even old hardware can achieve that without latency and having to pay for it. And don't even dream about 4k...
The whitepaper argues that most people can't play games with the highest settings but most people also doesn't have a stable 50Mbps internet connection. So the video feed would have to be compressed which means a maxed out game will look like it's on low settings. An uncompressed video feed would require very fast (as in high bandwidth) internet. Steam's average download rate is
33.6 Mbps currently in the US including gamers with their own gaming PCs who also tend to afford faster internet.
The whitepaper also says such delusions as mining would be
• 2-3 times more efficient than any altcoin mining add opportunities;
• More stable in the short, medium and long term than cryptocurrency mining;
Which is just nonsense they can't possibly know.
And even if the impossible could be done and more computers could collectively stream the same game in a decentralized manner for 1 person playing, one miner having a lagspike or any short issue would surely create visual glitches and redundancy would make the cost unfeasible. But again, you can't render current games in real time without the whole game running so it's a moot point. Shit, some games can't even use more than 1-2 CPU cores or use SLI ffs...
And of course if this already existing proprietary platform would really exist, you wouldn't need an ICO. This project just smells like just another scam ICO seasoned a random interesting topic.
Not being a gamer, or that technically inclined wanted to thank you for this post. haven't had time but when I read it I decided not to waste any time or money, thanks for sharing. I knew bandwidth would be a constraint but didn't realize the extent of it, not to mention the rest of the problems. They could do it in a centralized manner, and only have a decentralized token but still see project going nowhere until bandwidth (upstream) for average gamers increases and still end of day they could offer same service using Bitcoin instead of a token to compensate "miners" and renters since it's a centralized service. Anyway finally got a chance to check out the forums had this bookmarked wanted to say thanks for sharing your analysis of the whitepaper.
