Sony and PlayStation have had numerous patents published in recent months, giving a look at how it may be looking at improving the PlayStation platform and wider games industry. The newest patent from Sony looks specifically at protecting gamers while they play online games.
Private information being exposed or attacked has always been a risk of doing anything online. Multiplayer games, however, have an increased risk because the information of so many players is held on servers that can be targeted for attack. This makes bigger games like World of Warcraft and Roblox particularly attractive to individuals that want to steal private information.
To address this, Sony's patent looks at removing servers from games entirely. To make this viable, the patent looks at improving what is known as peer-to-peer connections so that they offer a more consistent experience while protecting those playing. The patent aims to accomplish this by introducing nodes into the chain of connections.
This would see a player connecting to one node which connects to another node that another player is connected to. The nodes would allow players to maintain security while an algorithm checks the inputs and signals of both nodes to ensure that they are identical. This would help the connection properly calculate who shot who in Call of Duty: Warzone's new Hijacked Gulag rather than favoring the host player like current peer-to-peer connections.
The patent also explores how this node system would work in the case of a multiplayer game that has more than just two players. Sony's patent describes this process as nodes being able to search for and find other nodes as players become close together. An example of this would be players who jump into The Burning Crusade Classic around the Blood Furnace. If one player was entering the area and another was leaving, the two players' nodes would connect for as long as the two players could see one another and then disconnect completely.
Of course, many patents come and go without ever leading to any meaningful developments or releases. While some patents, like PlayStation's recent patent for dynamic store pages, seem very realistic, Sony's most recent seems as though it could go either way. The technology described would make a very big difference for online gaming, and the added security would be a great benefit to the security of online gaming. Hopefully, Sony will have some news soon on whether or not this patent will lead to anything.