We’re all about changing the world. Creating tools that let developers implement sovereign data into their software applications. Giving companies the chance to own and manage their data lifecycles and be secure and compliant. Whether it’s boosting food security, augmenting satellite arrays, or making smart cars more functional and consumer-conscious - our tech is revolutionary. We’re trying to create a brand new understanding of the internet - and it takes a lot of work. 

Everyone needs to relax sometimes. Log in, play a game, meet with friends online, and enjoy online experiences that are novel, creative and escapist. The video game industry is the world’s largest entertainment media sector, worth more than music and movies combined. Try telling most Millenials and Gen Z members that gaming isn’t essential for society’s wellbeing. 

Gaming is life - and Source Network’s tools can have just as great an impact on playtime as they can on the lifeblood of the economy. Creating sovereign on-device data and making software come to data rather than the other way around can unlock new gaming experiences and empower old ones to their true potential.

The State of Play

Gaming is highly reliant on communication with servers. Most people these days know what ping means thanks to their headshot getting no-regged by the server or their online multiplayer game lagging to the point of being unplayable. Even modern single player games suffer the travesty of needing to be connected to a game company's central server in order to even run. This allows game developers to extract data from the player, ensure DRM protection in the most draconian way, and give the license to terminate a player’s account unilaterally for any reason.  

The problems with this approach are legion. Games only work as long as company’s keep them working. Players have zero sovereignty or ownership over the game they paid for. In online environments where players acquire in-game items, currencies, and character perks - that account can be revoked at any time. Your Hearthstone card collection you’ve spent thousands of dollars on can disappear in an instant because you initiated a single chargeback on a credit card due to poor product delivery - with zero recourse.

There’s also problems with the play itself. The Helldivers 2 CEO told players not to download their game day one to stop the server suffering overload from all the login requests and damaging the experience. Games, where insta-death is possible can have the entire purpose defeated because a server went down - as in the recent case of OnlyFangs, a World of Warcraft hardcore guild whose raid runs are being targeted by timely DDoS attacks, wiping out hundreds of hours of work of dozens of streamers (and their associated revenue) in an instant for something which isn’t their fault. 

Rented, unreliable, impermanent game space. Total lack of sovereignty or ownership for digital items you paid for. A client-server model which is anti-gamer and restrictive in the types of experiences it delivers. The traditional architecture of software environments hurt games and hurt gamers every single day, and deny a potential for new experiences made possible by edge computing.

Software to Data, Non-Custodial Player Characters, and AI NPCs

If we restore data sovereignty, and make software and AI models come to data - not the other way around - then we can create new gaming worlds and experiences that are currently impossible. Source Network’s tools like DefraDB, LensVM and Orbis make that model a reality, letting end-users permit access to data and run software locally on device.

Imagine playing an RPG and your character, items, and history are fully owned by you. This opportunity for non-custodial player identities creates the potential for truly persistent characters that can move between gaming universes. A game studio can create - without permission - a new gaming world, and players can transport their character into that world without having it put into the custody of the studio. It effectively births the gaming multiverse, and doesn’t lock it under the key of a single developer. LensVM, remember, makes data schema interoperable across software environments, and developers could use this to create experiences that can incorporate data across these virtual divides. It also creates a true digital collectible market where achievements in game, say a legendary sword acquired, could be transferred between players freely without reliance on a third party marketplace or gaming studio support. In this way, Source’s stack has the potential to enable portable cross-game economies.

This software to data structure also creates the opportunity for local AI models running on your device to participate in your game and infer from the data provided, without that data needing to be sent back and forth between and server and the sovereignty of that data being compromised. Local inference AIs running on device can react exclusively to unique player data they can access, letting them craft and shape experiences that suit player preferences. Special questlines, AI companions that have context-awareness from the last time you played. AI dungeon masters that adapt to your tone, style and ethics. No two players get the same narrative and, crucially, your experiences are not being overseen on some central server or the data you produce in your private gamespace trawled through an AI DM who is a companion, not an overseer. Moreover, your playthrough isn’t just a recording, it’s a truly ownable game state that you can choose to share with others.

No Servers, No Problem

By eliminating central servers from the data management process and letting edge devices process data local, we can make games that still have multiplayer functionality with none of the drawbacks those centralized servers come with. This means no switch off, no DDoS and, provided the connection between the edge devices is robust, no lag. You and your friend can share and mix your data in the game world software (with exact permissions, of course) and play co-op multiplayer without both being hooked up to a central machine. If you don’t need a server to explore worlds, then your game’s uptime never fails, even if it’s multiplayer, as long as you’re connected to the internet. 

New Digital Entertainment 

What’s more exciting is how this architecture is horizontally scaling. Source Network’s decentralized data stack means deploying to new edge environments and new devices is quick and painless. For gaming, this means the potential for developers to create location-based, time-based, or event-based gaming experiences (think Pokemon GO catchathon or a festival having their own discrete game environment) and new devices in the area can log in and hook their data up to the game world going on seamlessly. 

Imagine a music festival with RPG mechanics based on the acts you see, with redeemable items that transfer to your ownership permanently based upon the acts you see. Or gathering for a murder mystery event at a large house and an AI storyteller creating a life-action role playing game, and the game powered by the devices users brought to the event. Game devs can ship software where the backend is the player base itself, with minimal infra and server overhead, creating space for innovation, indie development, and proliferation of these experiences by radically reducing their cost base. 

That’s the power of local-first computing and local utilities - and it extends to games. Maybe when attending a fantasy game event, the data on your device could power your representation to other players. They can see you have the Sword of a Thousand Truths. If these gaming events are interoperable, you can picture a world where famous characters emerge organically from the game and carry on to future events. “Woah Jace is here, the guy who slayed the dragon at MagicFest 2025.” Best of all, these inherently social events don’t need to be privacy-robbing. Users can bring the data they want to the game, not just give it all up for a chance to play.

It’s in the Game

A lot of these use cases are speculative. Some of them can already be done by central server architectures - albeit poorly. Our stack doesn’t provide these types of experiences itself, it’s just the wiring to let others build it out. Yet it’s important to illustrate that Source Network’s vision for a new open internet isn’t just about principles or profit, it’s not just about revolution or reengineering - but about making new experiences possible by changing the way computers talk to one another and breaking the data-to-software model that dominates. In gaming, this means giving gamers back their games, letting them own their experiences, and creating opportunities for online and social gaming that are unlike any we’ve seen before.