Towards the end of last year, PlayStation owners Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) filed for a patent that allows viewers of live streams to get more involved by voting to remove players from games.
Kotaku has now reported that the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has given the green light on the patent which, among other things allows players to boot ‘substandard’ players- and even allow spectators to pay to boot others from games.
SIE filed for the patent with the USPTO way back in January 2020 and it wasn’t revealed to the public until July. The patent is certainly something like nothing we’ve seen before and it explains several “game-playing attributes” that may lead to a player being removed. These attributes include, “bad behaviour, poor sportsmanship, and substandard performance”. Once the player has been removed another player can be substituted.
The system kind of sounds like the AmongUs voting system. A player can get voted to be kicked but if the majority doesn’t agree then they will remain in the game. However, being able to pay to kick people seems very very odd, I can see it being abused and think it’s a weird money-making scheme.
The patent reads: “In one embodiment, the interface to enable providing of feedback to the cloud gaming system enables a spectator to pay in full a fixed price to have a player removed from playing the video game, and the removal of the player is performed by the cloud gaming system when payment in full of the fixed price is received from the spectator,” the patent reads.
“In another embodiment, the interface to enable providing of feedback to the cloud gaming system enables a plurality of spectators to pay a part of a fixed price to have a player removed from playing the video game, and the removal of the player is performed by the cloud gaming system when combined payment in full of the fixed price is received from the plurality of spectators each of whom paid a part of the fixed price to have the player removed from playing the video game.”
Please note patents are extremely unlikely to portray the final product and in most cases, a company makes the claim to an idea they may implement later down the line. I’m not so sure I want to see this one being rolled out though.
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