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YouTube reportedly experimenting with online games

Published June 26, 2023

Nearly six months after Google officially shut down its cloud gaming service Stadia, it appears the company may be launching a similar product through YouTube. The Google-owned video-sharing platform is reportedly testing an online game offering that could give users the ability to play games via the YouTube website on desktop or the YouTube app via iOS and Android devices.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the offering would be called “Playables” and would feature arcade-style games like Stack Bounce, where players use a bouncing ball to smash through layers of bricks.

In a statement provided to TechCrunch, a company spokesman declined to confirm the experiment but said, “Gaming has long been a focus at YouTube. We’re always experimenting with new features but have nothing to announce right now.”

When Google initially announced in a blog post that Stadia would shut down, the company also hinted that the underlying technology that powers the gaming service could be applied across “other parts of Google like YouTube, Google Play, and our Augmented Reality (AR) efforts,” the company wrote in September.

If YouTube were to move forward with this new gaming initiative, it’s our guess that Google would reuse the code it developed for Stadia.

Stadia launched in 2019 and let users play games directly from the cloud rather than downloading games to a console. It also had a feature on YouTube called Crowd Choice, where creators could livestream a game they’re playing on Stadia and let viewers answer polls in the chat section. However, the service struggled to reach enough players and shut down in January of this year.

Google pulls the plug on Stadia

YouTube reportedly experimenting with online games by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Apple’s new toolkit makes it easier for developers to bring Windows games to Mac

Published June 7, 2023

Apple has unveiled a new toolkit that is designed to make it easier and faster for developers to bring their PC games to macOS. The tech giant unveiled the Game Porting Toolkit this week at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

Apple says the toolkit “eliminates months of upfront work” and enables developers to see how well their existing game could run on Mac in just a few days, Apple says. The toolkit also simplifies the process of converting the game’s shaders and graphics code to take advantage of Apple silicon performance, significantly reducing the total development time. With this tool, developers can launch an unmodified version of a Windows game on a Mac and see how well it runs before fully porting a game.

“With Macs more popular than ever before, there’s never been a better time to bring your games to millions of new players,” said Aiswariya Sreenivassan, an engineering project manager for GPUs and graphics at Apple, in a WWDC session. “Porting your Windows game to the Mac is now faster than ever. This year, the new Game Porting Toolkit provides an emulation environment to run your existing, unmodified Windows game, and you can use it to quickly understand the graphics feature usage and performance potential of your game when running on a Mac.”

Notably, the emulator can also run Microsoft’s DirectX12, which enables developers to add graphics effects to PC games, and hasn’t been natively available for Macs. During the session, Apple demoed the developers of horror game, The Medium, using the emulator to run a DirectX12 Window build of their game on a Mac.

In the past, it’s been difficult and time-consuming for developers to port Windows games to Mac because doing so involves a lot of difficult steps. Apple’s new toolkit helps developers better understand how to optimize their games on macOS. The idea behind the tool is to significantly cut down the time and effort it takes when porting games from Windows to Mac.

The launch of the new toolkit is garnering excitement from developers and the broader gaming community. GitHub senior developer Christina Warren noted in a tweet that the toolkit is “essentially Proton (Valve’s Wine thing for Linux/SteamOS and DX12) but for macOS. This is massive.”

Although the new toolkit is designed for developers, some Reddit users have already used to it bring games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Hogwarts Legacy to Mac. It’s worth mentioning that it’s possible to run into bugs when running games this way.

In addition to launching the new toolkit, Apple also introduced a new “Game Mode” in macOS Sonoma. The company says Game Mode delivers an optimized gaming experience with smoother and more consistent frame rates, by ensuring games get the highest priority on the CPU and GPU.

“Game Mode also makes gaming on Mac even more immersive — dramatically lowering audio latency with AirPods, and significantly reducing input latency with popular game controllers like those for Xbox and PlayStation by doubling the Bluetooth sampling rate,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Game Mode works with any game, including all of the recent and upcoming Mac games.”

Apple’s new toolkit makes it easier for developers to bring Windows games to Mac by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

Minecraft is releasing a new version for Chromebooks

Published June 7, 2023

Minecraft is releasing a new version of its game Minecraft: Bedrock Edition for Chromebooks for $19.99. The purchase will give users access to Minecraft Marketplace, the ability to play on Realms and the Android version as well.

Google said that Minecraft should be compatible with Chromebooks released in the last three years. Here are the full system requirements for Chromebooks to run Minecraft:

Processor: Intel Celeron N4500, Intel i3-7130U, Mediatek MT8183, Qualcomm SC7180, AMD Ryzen 3 3250C or better
Operating System: ChromeOS 111
System Architecture: 64-bit (x86_64, arm64-v8a)
Memory: 4GB RAM
Storage: Minimum of 1GB game installation, maps and other files

The company said that Minecraft for Chromebooks will support cross-play with a Microsoft account so you can play with your friends using other devices like Android, Windows systems, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch. Cross-play gives users access to the Create mode to build with unlimited blocks or hunt for resources in the Survival mode.

Image Credits: Google

However, users won’t be able to port their worlds from another platform and will have to start afresh on their Chromebooks.

While the $19.99 bundle offers access to the game both on Chromebook and Android, users can purchase them separately as well. The Android version costs $6.99 and the upgrade to the Chromebook version costs $13.99.

Google has been trying to push for making Android games compatible with Chromebooks. Last year, it started testing keyboard support for such games on ChromeOS.

Update (07/06/2023 9 PM IST): Earlier version of the article said Minecraft is in early access on Chromebooks based on the support page. However, the company said the page is being updated and the full version is available on Chromebooks.

Steam (officially) comes to Chrome OS

Minecraft is releasing a new version for Chromebooks by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Netflix announces LEGO mobile game and a daily version of Cut the Rope

Published June 6, 2023

Netflix announced Tuesday two new mobile games coming soon to the platform — the LEGO-themed strategy battle game LEGO Legacy: Heroes Unboxed and a puzzle adventure game called Paper Trail.

Additionally, the company revealed the release dates of Cut the Rope Daily, a new version of the popular game where players feed candy to a creature named Om Nom by cutting strands of rope, and The Queen’s Gambit: Chess — which was announced last year.

The Queen’s Gambit: Chess and Cut the Rope Daily will launch on July 25 and August 1, respectively. Both games will be available on mobile exclusively for Netflix subscribers.

LEGO Legacy: Heroes Unboxed, developed and published by Gameloft in 2020, is a significant addition to Netflix’s gaming library, given that LEGO is one of the largest toy companies in the world. The streamer has reportedly struggled to convince its enormous subscriber base to play its mobile games, which is likely why it continues to add well-known titles to its library.

In the nostalgic game, players can collect classic and modern LEGO minifigures, build sets, travel to different maps, complete quests and participate in turn-based battles. Minifigures include Chicken Suit Guy, Hot Dog Man, Pirate Princess Argenta, Santa and Ghostbusters, among others.

Netflix has yet to announce when LEGO Legacy: Heroes Unboxed will release on its streaming app. However, when the game launches, it will no longer be free for anyone to play since it will be exclusive to Netflix subscribers.

Earlier this year, Gameloft notified players that LEGO Legacy: Heroes Unboxed would no longer be able to download on mobile and PC on February 28 and was removed from Google Play, App Store, Microsoft Store, Samsung Galaxy Store and Amazon Appstore. The game officially shut down on these servers on April 28. Although it’s currently available on Facebook’s gaming platform on the web, it’ll be unplayable at the end of 2023.

Image Credits: LEGO/Gameloft

Paper Trail is a new, yet-to-be-released game that takes place in a paper world, where players fold pages and merge paths to progress through the game. The main character, aptly named Paige, leaves her home for the first time and players must solve puzzles to help her on the journey.

Netflix hasn’t revealed a launch date, but it will be exclusively on mobile for its subscribers. The game is also set to launch sometime in August on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, PC and Xbox.

Announced at Netflix’s 2022 Geeked Week event, The Queen’s Gambit: Chess game is tied to Netflix’s hit series, which stars Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon, a talented chess player who wants to become the greatest player in the world. Next month, Netflix subscribers will be able to play chess as Beth, solve puzzles and compete in matches against friends.

The game pays homage to the TV show as it features recognizable locations and characters like Beth’s house, the Methuen orphanage, the Las Vegas tournament, Mr. Shaibel, Borgov and more.

Netflix announces games tied to its popular shows, including ‘The Queen’s Gambit,’ ‘Shadow and Bone’ and more

Cut the Rope was a hugely popular game when it first came out in 2010 and has been downloaded more than 1.6 billion times.

This summer, Netflix is launching a twist on the game, giving players access to one challenge per day instead of making all the puzzles available at once. Like the classic version, the challenges will involve cutting rope, collecting stars, popping balloons and more.

Image Credits: ZeptoLab

As previously announced, Netflix will also launch the adventure game Oxenfree II: Lost Signals on July 12. The game is set five years after the events of the first Oxenfree game — a supernatural thriller about a group of friends who accidentally disturb a mysterious, dimensional rift inside a haunted cave. Both games were developed by Night School Studio, which Netflix acquired in 2021.

The company noted in Tuesday’s announcement that Oxenfree II: Lost Signals is the first new title that is being released from one of Netflix’s internal studios.

The game will feature all new characters and an original story, according to Netflix. Oxenfree II: Lost Signals centers around an environmental researcher, Riley Poverly, who investigates unnaturally occurring radio frequency signals in her hometown.

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals will be available on mobile exclusively for Netflix members. It will also be released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC and Mac via Steam.

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals will launch on Netflix and other platforms on July 12

Netflix announces LEGO mobile game and a daily version of Cut the Rope by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

This AI used GPT-4 to become an expert Minecraft player

Published June 2, 2023

AI researchers have built a Minecraft bot that can explore and expand its capabilities in the game’s open world — but unlike other bots, this one basically wrote its own code through trial and error and lots of GPT-4 queries.

Called Voyager, this experimental system is an example of an “embodied agent,” an AI that can move and act freely and purposefully in a simulated or real environment. Personal assistant type AIs and chatbots don’t have to actually do stuff, let alone navigate a complex world to get that stuff done. But that’s exactly what a household robot might be expected to do in the future, so there’s lots of research into how they might do that.

Minecraft is a good place to test such things because it’s a very (very) approximate representation of the real world, with simple and straightforward rules and physics, but it’s also complex and open enough that there’s lots to accomplish or try. Purpose-built simulators are great, too, but they have their own limitations.

MineDojo is a simulation framework built around Minecraft, since you can’t just plonk a random AI in there and expect it to understand what all these blocks and pigs are doing. Its creators (lots of overlap with the Voyager team) put together YouTube videos about the game, transcripts, wiki articles, and a whole lot of Reddit posts from r/minecraft, among other data, so users can create or fine-tune an AI model on them. It also lets those models be evaluated more or less objectively by seeing how well they do things like build a fence around a llama or find and mine a diamond.

Voyager excels at these tasks, performing much better than the only other model that comes close, Auto-GPT. But they have a similar approach: using GPT-4 to write their own code as they go.

Normally you’d just train a model on all that good Minecraft data and hope it would figure out how to fight skeletons when the sun goes down. Voyager, however, starts out relatively naive, and as it encounters things in the game, it has a little internal conversation with GPT-4 about what it ought to do and how.

Directing the next action, and adding skills to the pile. Image Credits: MineDojo

For instance, night falls and those skeletons come out. The agent has a general idea of this, but it asks itself, What would a good player of this game do when there are monsters nearby? Well, GPT-4 says, if you want to explore the world safely, you’ll want to make and equip a sword, then whack the skeleton with it while avoiding getting hit. And that general sense of what to do gets translated to concrete goals: collect stone and wood, build a sword at the crafting table, equip it, and fight a skeleton.

Once it’s done those things, they’re entered into a general skill library so that later, when the task is “go deep into a cave to find iron ore,” it doesn’t have to learn to fight again from scratch. It does still use GPT, but it uses the cheaper and faster GPT-3.5, which tells it the skills most relevant to a given situation — so it doesn’t try to mine the skeleton and fight the ore.

It’s similar to an agent like Auto-GPT that, when faced with an interface it doesn’t know yet, has to teach itself to navigate it in order to accomplish its goal. But Minecraft is a much deeper environment than it is used to solving for, so a specialty agent like Voyager does far better. It finds more stuff, learns more skills, and explores a much greater area than the other bots.

Interestingly but perhaps not surprisingly, GPT-4 wipes the floor with GPT-3.5 (i.e., ChatGPT) when it comes to generating useful code. A test replacing the former with the latter had the agent hit a wall early on, perhaps even literally, and fail to improve. It may not be obvious from talking to the two models that one is much smarter, but the truth is you don’t have to be particularly smart to carry on an apparently intelligent conversation (ask me how I know). Coding is much more difficult and GPT-4 was a big update there.

The point of this research isn’t to obsolete Minecraft players but to find methods by which relatively simple AI models can improve themselves based on their “experiences,” for lack of a better word. If we’re going to have robots helping us in our homes, hospitals, and offices, they will need to learn and apply those lessons to future actions.

This AI used GPT-4 to become an expert Minecraft player by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

Lumari is a new social sandbox game with cute creatures, building capabilities and more

Published June 2, 2023

Gaming startup Proxima emerged from stealth earlier this week, announcing its funding round as well as its inaugural game, Lumari, a social sandbox adventure game that appears to be a cross between Animal Crossing, Pokémon and Minecraft.

The game studio raised $1.6 million in pre-seed funding led by London Venture Partners, with participation from Konvoy Ventures, Progression Fund, Valhalla Ventures, Maveron LLC and Artichoke Capital.

The majority of the funding will go toward developing the game, which is still in the early stages.

Proxima founder Ran Mo is a former lead product manager at Electronic Arts (EA), and previously worked on The Sims, one of EA’s major video game franchises. The Proxima team is comprised of five veterans of the game industry from Riot, Storm8, Wildlife Studios and Unity.

Image Credits: Proxima

Although specific details about Lumari are being kept under wraps, Mo told TechCrunch that, similar to other sandbox games, players will be able to visit each other, chat and build things together. The game will also allow players to collect creatures (basically pet companions for players), build a home and habitat, grow a garden and explore an expansive world. Lumari means “creatures of light,” according to Mo.

Customization will be a major part of the game, noted Mo, including the ability to customize characters and even the creatures.

“Ultimately, we want to build this for people to find their place,” he said. “We think about it as a canvas for people to express themselves and hang out.”

As seen in the trailer below, players will also have to fight what looks like purple-colored beings. “Beware, danger lurks across the reaches of this fractured world,” the Lumari website writes.

The game isn’t expected to launch for another two years or longer, Mo revealed.

On June 15, Lumari is having its first community playtest, which will end on July 15. Players can sign up at playlumari.com. At this time, the playtest will be single-player and users must have a Windows PC to participate. When Lumari officially launches, it’ll be available on more devices.

Lumari is a new social sandbox game with cute creatures, building capabilities and more by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

‘Stranger Things’ game developer BonusXP is shutting down

Published June 1, 2023

BonusXP, the game studio that worked with Netflix to kick off its gaming initiative and introduced “Stranger Things” titles on mobile devices, as well as on desktop and consoles, is shutting down.

The Texas-based studio announced the closure through its social media channels on Wednesday evening.

“We have begun the difficult process of ceasing operations at BonusXP. We have enjoyed making games for you over the last 11 years,” the studio said in a message posted on Twitter.

Founded in 2012, BonusXP began its journey as an indie studio. It, however, started adding licensed games to its portfolio based on Netflix shows in 2017.

The first game created by BonusXP based on the Netflix horror show “Stranger Things” was called Stranger Things: The Game. In 2021, Netflix introduced the game title on mobile devices as Stranger Things: 1984. The game studio also developed Stranger Things 3: The Game, which the streaming giant bought as part of its initial mobile games.

In addition to its Stranger Things titles, BonusXP developed The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics based on Netflix’s fantasy-adventure series. It was launched in 2020 across platforms, including Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows and macOS.

It’s currently unclear what caused BonusXP to suddenly close up shop, but TechCrunch understands the studio laid off its entire team. The studio’s website was also not working at the time of filing this story.

“Our focus is on helping our team find their next opportunities,” the studio said in its public message.

BonusXP co-founder and CEO Dave Pottinger was not immediately available to respond to a request for comment.

Alongside BonusXP, Netflix has worked with a number of game developers, including Ubisoft, to offer its users a total of 55 games. The company acquired three game studios and established its own studios to rapidly expand its gaming business. Moreover, it is set to introduce 40 new games this year and has 70 in development with its partners as well as 16 by its native studios.

TechCrunch reached out to Netflix on the shutting down of BonusXP and will update this story if the company responds.

‘Stranger Things’ game developer BonusXP is shutting down by Jagmeet Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Meta announces over 20 new games for Quest headsets

Published June 1, 2023

In addition to news of a $499 Quest 3 headset arriving this fall, Meta today announced over 15 new titles for Quest VR headsets at the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase today. The games include Stranger Things VR, a new version of NFL Pro Era, Assassin’s Creed: Nexus VR, and Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord.

The company is partnering with multiple game studios to bring different kinds of games to the Quest platform. A VR take on SEGA’s classic 1999 arcade game Samba de Amigo is releasing soon. Vampire: The Masquerade — Justice lets you become a vampire in Venice. Players also have to be evil and play Vecna in the Stranger Things VR game. Racket Club mixes tennis and pickleball to create a new racket sport.

Here is the full list of games announced at the show today:

Samba de Amigo
I Expect You to Die 3: Cog in the Machine
Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire
Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord

Image Credits: Meta

UNDERDOGS
The Next Evolution of NFL PRO ERA
Racket Club

Image Credits: Meta

Vampire: The Masquerade — Justice
Dungeons of Eternity
The 7th Guest
Stranger Things VR
Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable
Bulletstorm
Assassin’s Creed: Nexus VR
No More Rainbows

Image Credits: Meta

Little Cities
Death Game Hotel
Ghost Signal: A Stellaris Game
Onward

Image Credits: Meta

Walkabout Mini Golf
Demeo Battles
We Are One
Powerwash Simulator
Arizona Sunshine 2

Image Credits: Meta

Meta’s announcement comes days before Apple is expected to present its much-awaited headset at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) next week.

The Mark Zuckerberg–owned company is persisting on having great metaverse ambitions despite setbacks. Last year, it unveiled the expensive $1,500 Quest Pro VR headset, and now it is working on bringing more gaming titles to the platform. Earlier this year, reports suggested that Roblox was planning to launch its game on Quest sometime in 2023.

Meta is also trying to expand the content library on these headsets. The company announced a deal with the NBA in January to offer 52 live games on the platform. In April, Meta announced that it’s partnering with Peacock for content streaming on Quest devices.

Meta announces over 20 new games for Quest headsets by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Amazon is developing a Lord of the Rings MMO

Published May 15, 2023

Amazon has reached a deal with Embracer Group, the company that holds the IP rights for “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit,” to release a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. The upcoming game will be an open-world MMO adventure set in Middle-earth, featuring the stories of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” literary trilogy.

The game is in early stages of production with the Amazon Games Orange County studio, which is the same studio behind the MMO New World. Amazon Games will publish the game globally for PC and consoles. Amazon says it will reveal additional details, including launch timing, at a later date.

Although Amazon Studios produces “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” for Prime Video, Amazon says the show is unrelated to this upcoming MMO game in development with Amazon Games.

“We’re committed to bringing players high-quality games, whether through original IPs or long-beloved ones like The Lord of the Rings,” said Christoph Hartmann, the vice president of Amazon Games, in a press release. “Bringing players a fresh take on The Lord of the Rings has long been an aspiration for our team, and we’re honored and grateful that Middle-earth Enterprises is entrusting us with this iconic world. We’re also pleased to be expanding our relationship with Embracer Group following our Tomb Raider deal last year, as they’ve proven to be excellent collaborators.”

It’s worth noting that the upcoming game will be Amazon’s second go at a Lord of the Rings MMO. The company’s first attempt was announced in 2019 and then canceled in 2021. The game was being co-developed by Amazon, Athlon Games and Leyou. The project was shelved after a disagreement between Amazon and Tencent, which acquired Leyou in 2020.

The news of the upcoming game comes as Amazon is furthering its push into video games and reworking its strategy. Earlier this year, the company laid off around 100 employees across its video games division. The layoffs included employees in the Game Growth group, Amazon’s San Diego gaming studio and Prime Gaming.

Amazon Games’ lineup includes the internally developed MMO New World and action role-playing game Lost Ark. The company is also developing a new multiplatform “Tomb Raider” title. Launched in 2013, Amazon Games has yet to produce a major hit despite several published projects. The company is now looking to cook up a success with a major fantasy franchise title that will likely garner attention.

Amazon to license original series and movies to other media companies

Amazon is developing a Lord of the Rings MMO by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

Nexon takes 20-year-old MapleStory into web3 with Haechi’s help

Published May 12, 2023

Nexon, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world, is wading into web3 like some of its peers in Asia. The developer of MapleStory is creating a blockchain-powered ecosystem based on the 20-year-old massively multiplayer online game, where players can trade in-game assets like outfits, equipment and virtual pets in the form of non-fungible tokens.

Around 160,000 people in South Korea are still playing MapleStory today, the company wrote recently in a blog citing data from Korea MapleStory.

Blockchain games have been cropping up everywhere in the past two years, but few have entered the mainstream and even the popular ones, like the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, have been short-lived.

Nexon pledges to create more sustainable crypto games. “There was a time when the perception of ‘blockchain = P2E’ was widely accepted, and there was a lot of talk about using blockchain to make games that make money,” a spokesperson from Nexon told TechCrunch in a text message.

“But since, the market has changed, and there are more creators who want to use blockchain to seriously develop games.”

It’s still too early to say if MapleStory N, Nexon’s first blockchain game, and MapleStory Universe, the NFT ecosystem based on the classic game’s IP, will ever reach the heights of their Web 2.0 version. Nexon has a rosy outlook, of course.

“MapleStory has more than 180 million accumulative global users, and there are even more people who love the MapleStory IP. We anticipate that MapleStory N and MapleStory Universe will be enjoyed by many players,” said Nexon’s spokesperson.

The main criticism of play-to-earn games is their flawed economies, where gamers purchase NFTs only to create and sell these digital goods to those who buy-in after them. Nexon isn’t going down the pyramid scheme-like path.

In MapleStory N, there is no cash shop and players acquire items through gameplay like completing quests and defeating monsters. If people don’t get what they want, they can acquire items from others through the ecosystem’s secondary NFT marketplace. Eventually, players can also trade their in-game assets on external marketplaces, according to Nexon.

Onboarding the masses

Nexon is working with a handful of partners to enable its transition into web3. The firm already announced that the digital goods of MapleStory Universe will trade on Polygon, an Ethereum scaling solution that’s popular amongst game developers. Today, the South Korean gaming firm said it’s teaming up with another web3 company, Haechi Labs, a crypto auditing and wallet solution provider used by more than 500 companies.

“A host of gaming companies started knocking on our door after seeing Axie Infinity’s success since Haechi Labs has been offering smart contract security auditing and wallet solutions in the past 5 years,” the company’s CEO Geon-gi Moon told TechCrunch in a written response.

“Nowhere else do you see such a high number of executives at AAA game companies so bullish on integrating their games with blockchain, but South Korea.”

Most existing decentralized applications require users to log in via their crypto wallets. But what if people have no prior web3 experience? Haechi is touting Face Wallet, which allows users to log into crypto games like MapleStory N through their existing accounts with Google, Facebook, Apple, Discord and Kakao.

Once logged in, users will gain access to their Face Wallet accounts. Anyone who’s used a self-custodial wallet like MetaMask knows the stress of trying to keep their 16-word seed phrase safe. Losing one’s seed phrase means losing access to the wallet permanently. Custodial solutions are easy to use, but on the other hand, asset owners are exposed to the risk the platform could get hacked or go bust.

Face Wallet is trying to solve the custodian dilemma by offering a self-custodial wallet that allows users to log in with a six-digit password and gives them the option to recover passcodes.

This is how it works: When a user creates a wallet via Face Wallet, its key is split into two encrypted “shares,” explained Moon. Share 1 is stored in a secure infrastructure environment and, usually, also in the user’s device. Share 2 is kept in the Face Wallet team’s repository. The decrypted keys are never shared with Haechi; nor can Haechi decrypt either of the encrypted keys, added Moon.

Haechi isn’t the only one trying to make self-hosted wallets more user-friendly. The Ethereum community itself is tackling this issue through a major technical upgrade called “account abstraction” and developers, such as venture-backed Soul Wallet, are racing to introduce wallets powered by smart contract capabilities.

Gaming vets promise to make blockchain games fun and sustainable

Nexon takes 20-year-old MapleStory into web3 with Haechi’s help by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch