Powering Web3-enabled gaming with GameShift by Solana Labs

As we join the vibrant community at Solana Breakpoint this week, we're excited to share how Google Cloud is helping shape the future of gaming through its partnership with Solana Labs. The Gamer Village at Breakpoint is a testament to the innovative spirit driving Web3 gaming forward, and we're proud to be at the forefront of this revolution.  

At the nexus of our partnership is GameShift, which provides the full slate of Web3 primitives and actions — like wallets, tokenized assets, and on-chain markets — that games require; as of today, Gameshift’s offerings are now available through the Google Cloud Marketplace.

We want to share with the Google Cloud community the potential for Web3 in games, how GameShift can help developers realize this potential, the safety of using GameShift for Web3, and how GameShift and Google Cloud now work together seamlessly. We welcome anyone interested to reach out to their Google Cloud account manager or to GameShift.

Google Cloud has long recognized the potential of Web3 technologies. Its support for this ecosystem includes its Blockchain Node Engine product, Web3 BigQuery datasets, and the Web3 for Startups program. 

As a leading blockchain, Solana brings top transaction throughput, 99.95% uptime, and billions in transactions daily.  This integration connects games to millions of users in a unified ecosystem of wallets, assets, and activity. Solana is consistently a top-3 performer in terms of NFT, decentralized exchange trading, and stablecoin volume, as well as transactions-per-second in production, and active wallets. 

These results make Solana a great option for games seeking to leverage Web3 to create new player experiences and new revenue channels.

The Web3 evolution of gaming

Video games are constantly evolving. Just like other forms of media, games need to constantly reinvent themselves to offer novel experiences to their users. This could be in the form of new creative assets, gen AI-generated digital assets, story lines, watermarking, provenance or IP licensing. For the same reason, games developers have been rapid adopters of new technology to not only enable new gameplay mechanics, but also to find their way into new parts of our everyday lives, including crossover points into seemingly mundane activities like loyalty programs. 

Web3 provides a new avenue for games to reach players with an evolved value proposition. With Web3, games can easily convert their players from customers into partners and co-creators. This is important because players are increasingly sophisticated in their understanding of how they provide value to a game, and how they get monetized. 

In short, players are expecting more from their experiences.

Blockchains provide the building blocks that power complete game asset economies, including user-generated content, global game item trading, gamer identity, anti-cheat, and cross-game portability. They also facilitate nuanced monetization schemes aligned with how players interact with the game. Games can implement cost-efficient microtransactions, generate secondary market revenue on first-party and user-generated assets, and monetize their in-game currencies. To players, these revenue strategies feel cooperative rather than extractive.  

By simplifying interactions between on-chain programs from different providers — also known as “composability” — blockchains enable novel experiences and developer efficiencies. In the payments domain, composability dramatically reduces the cost and complexity of offering  real-money gaming services, earning interest from stored value balances, and providing player choice in payment methods and pay-outs.  Composability also opens the door to exciting features like guild management, open modding, and global player reputation systems, all of which are on the forefront of Web3 game development.

GameShift simplifies Web3 for games

“Game studios have recently been considering Web3 for new approaches to growth and development, but are often discouraged by the seeming complexity of the technology and the Web3 community” said Jack Buser, director for Games at Google Cloud. “Game studios are already overburdened, and need solutions like GameShift that provide simplified technical and cultural interfaces to Web3.” 

GameShift’s API-first philosophy meets game developers where they’re at, without requiring any blockchain experience to get started. “Our goal in building GameShift,” said  Davis Hart, general manager of GameShift, “is to provide a development and player experience as similar to existing services as possible while leveraging the unique capabilities of Web3.” 

Earth From Another Sun, a cinematic-quality RPG, is using GameShift to power their entire blockchain integration, said Freeman Fan, CEO of the game’s developer. “By leveraging GameShift's proven toolset and innovative features, we can implement best-in-class Web3 gaming experiences while reducing development time and costs by 90%,” Fan said.

Key Advantages 

GameShift’s features cover the full spectrum of Web3 gaming functionality in a developer-friendly REST API. The team at Solana Labs offers GameShift customers deep connectivity to the Solana ecosystem, support designing Web3 gaming strategies, and growth support. This means that with GameShift, studios don’t need multiple providers or specialized blockchain developers, and they can rest assured that GameShift will grow with them over time.

Today, GameShift offers five core features:

• Seamless wallet integration: Create embedded wallets in your game or support players with  existing Solana wallets. GameShift wallets abstract key storage and provide a clean and friendly transaction signing flow, providing a smooth, secure experience for players without requiring them to leave your game environment. The fact that our wallets are non-custodial means that games don’t need to manage pools of user assets.

•  Game asset management: Easily create and manage in-game assets on the Solana blockchain, with custom asset attributes, rarity, and in-game functionality. It also handles asset transfers, making it simple to implement features like trading or gifting within your game economy.

• Pay-in and pay-out systems: Implement secure, low-cost transactions for in-game purchases, subscriptions, or rewards. This API supports both fiat and cryptocurrency payments, handling currency conversion and transaction processing behind the scenes. It also facilitates easy withdrawals, allowing players to transfer their game-related assets back to their personal wallets or bank accounts.

• Marketplace functionality: Quickly set up and manage in-game marketplaces where players can buy, sell, or trade their assets. This API handles listings, bids, transactions, and transfers, ensuring a secure and efficient marketplace. It also provides tools for implementing royalties, allowing you to earn a percentage of secondary sales, even on user-generated content.

• Rewards programs: Design and implement sophisticated reward systems using blockchain technology. This API allows you to create token-based loyalty programs or achievement-based rewards that provide players with tangible value. It handles program enrollment, tracking, and rewards distribution with custom logic,  enabling you to incentivize player engagement and retention in innovative ways.

Reducing the risks of Web3 in gaming

“Developers are rightly concerned about player safety given the history of hacks and scams in Web3,” noted Hart. “But, with the combination of the right security practices and game design, these concerns can be brought to the level that developers routinely address in their off-chain systems.”

At the core of GameShift’s strategy is its invisible non-custodial wallet system. This feature provides individual user wallets, each backed by its own cryptographic keys that segregate assets between users, reducing the risk that an attacker could access the assets of all users simultaneously. Key management is abstracted away from  o the user, eliminating the risks associated with user-managed keys and seed phrases.

Players using GameShift wallets are further protected from scams because the game is in control of when and what types of transactions are presented to the user. Transaction Transaction approval flows simulate the effect of any on-chain action and alert the user of any balance changes. GameShift uses only on-chain services from vetted and trusted providers. These strategies  prevent a third party from defrauding users of their assets through phishing attacks or hacks.

“Our approach allows us to provide an approachable player experience that avoids many of the risks game studios are worried about,” Hart said. 

Leveraging Google Cloud with Web3

With GameShift now deployed on the Google Cloud Marketplace, developers can quickly enable Web3 within their existing Cloud game backend services.

This reference architecture hints at what’s possible with GameShift on Google Cloud, including:

• Supplementing existing player data in BigQuery with GameShift transactions, creating a richer view of player activity.

• Deploying BigQuery and Vertex AI against the Solana public BigQuery dataset to understand how players interact on-chain.

• Using Cloud Storage to easily host user-generated content globally.

• Applying generative AI for gaming assets as well  as user-generated content to ensure compliance with content policies, content moderation, toxicity, anti-cheat and player privacy, safety, and security.

• Using Pub/Sub to rapidly ingest live blockchain event data and trigger in-game activity.

Looking Ahead

The future of Web3 gaming is bright, and we're excited about upcoming developments:

Solana Mobile:  Announced at Breakpoint 2024,  the next generation web3 mobile device  will offer a new platform for mobile Web3 gaming.

Solana Permissioned Environments: Combined with GameShift on Google Cloud, Solana Permissioned Environments will allow studios to benefit from the Solana ecosystem while maintaining control over their chain access.

Tournament Management: GameShift has just announced a real-money gaming tournament management product, simplifying the integration of fiat and Web3 payments for game tournaments.

Google Cloud and GameShift are committed to empowering game developers with the tools and infrastructure they need to create the next generation of engaging, secure, and innovative gaming experiences. Through its collaboration with Solana Labs and the power of GameShift, Google Cloud is helping  turn the promise of Web3 gaming into reality.

Next Steps

We encourage anyone interested in GameShift and Google Cloud to contact their Google Cloud account rep, contact GameShift, and review the GameShift documentation.