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There are three big reasons that this type of cross-platform usability for things like character or weapon skins is not, and will never be, a viable *thing.* In order from least to most impossible-to-navigate: 1. Visual issues 2. Technical considerations 3. Legal agreements 2/

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Simply in terms of the visual issues associated with porting something from Call of Duty to Minecraft, it's an irreconcilable jump from one art style to the other. It's moving from cubes to detailed realistic people, environments, and even rendering technology. 3/

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How do you do that? What process do you use to make the jump from one art style to another? Can you even do it? Sure, you can, in theory, but you have to completely rebuild those visual assets every single time the thing goes into another product or property. 4/

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As we saw years ago with the community-created and cross-promotional assets put into games like Team Fortress 2, which largely codified how this process works, it requires an immense amount of effort in designing or REdesigning these assets. 5/

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As an artist I can go on and on about the visual issues associated with these types of things, especially because I've been personally involved in them, but I'll cut it off there and move on. 6/

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Regarding technical considerations, this is where things get to be VERY dicey. If you thought things like server queues were an issue right now, they would become literally hundreds of times worse if each and every item in the game needed a blockchain verification step. 7/

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There are multiple checks that need to happen server- and client-side to make sure things like gold dupe bugs don't happen, and that gets worse with hundreds, thousands, or potentially millions of completely unique items. 8/

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In addition, you need multiple different systems in place using open standards that EVERYONE follows if you have these items cross-populating on multiple games. You can't have different systems crashing against each other, or you run into massive compatibility issues. 9/

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Those systems would involve things like: - Where the item data is stored - The format in which it's stored - How the item data is translated between different clients, engines, and server backends For art assets, text, and audio, it also has to include localization data. 10/

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Once again, you can go on and on about very high-level technical issues associated with JUST populating an item across multiple types of game servers, and there are literally thousands of people more qualified than I am to discuss that. Moving on. 11/

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Now the most sticky part of all this: Legal agreements. Currently, legal agreements for getting a promotional item in a game are, uh, nightmares. 12/

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If you want to put a promotional item in a game, you need to consult with experts on copyright, entertainment law, international legal counsel if your game is multiplayer or distributed in certain territories, etc. And that's JUST to say "We want to do a promo with you." 13/

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That's not even all the legalese that needs to happen with legal approval of art, audio, etc. For example, an artist might accidentally fuck up and make something that looks like an existing product. You need legal checks for that, along with a paper trail for all of it. 14/

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So, what is the legal agreement going to look like if a Final Fantasy 14 player wants a Minecraft skin? No idea! But it's going to involve a bunch of lawyers from Microsoft, the Minecraft team specifically, Square-Enix, the FF14 team specifically, etc. /15

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I would like you to consider how much of a nightmare that would be. Add on to that nightmare every time someone says that item should work in a new, different game. Every rights holder (read, anyone who has it in their game) will need to give the go-ahead to some degree. /16

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