One of the most annoying aspects of using the modern Internet is having to convince every other website that I am, in fact, a human, typically by clicking on little squares of traffic lights and bicycles. The irritation has been compounded since I learned that tools like CAPTCHA don't really do much to deter online bots at all, but are in fact "a tracking cookie farm for profit masquerading as a security service."
So it was with a raised eyebrow that I learned Razer is collaborating with blockchain-based verification system World to create what is essentially a CAPTCHA for games. Confusingly named "Razer ID verified by World ID", it aims to let players confirm their nature as a sentient, organic lifeform in games that support it.
"With AI technologies on the rise, can you be certain your opponent is human?" asks Razer on its website, seemingly neglecting the fact that bots in multiplayer games have been an issue long before the advent of LLMs and advanced machine learning algorithms. "By verifying your Razer ID with Proof of Human, you gain a secure and private way to confirm your human identity, all through the convenience of single sign-on".
- Thanks to Doom, I can finally solve captcha prompts without wanting to spoon my eyeballs out and wander into the wilderness
- A 2023 study concluded CAPTCHAs are 'a tracking cookie farm for profit masquerading as a security service' that made us spend 819 million hours clicking on traffic lights to generate nearly $1 trillion for Google
Let's not dwell on the deeply dystopian nature of the phrase "Proof of Human" and instead dig into how all this supposedly works. Razer ID is linked to World ID, part of the "World Network" cryptocurrency initiative, founded in 2019 with the involvement of OpenAI's Sam Altman and formerly known as Worldcoin. The goal of World is allegedly to create a verifiably human online network, World ID is described on the World site as "a secure, permissionless identity protocol" that it claims functions as "a global digital passport for the age of AI".
Creating a World ID can apparently be done in two ways, either submitting ID documents to the World app (such as your passport), or, and I swear I am not joking here, visiting an "Orb". Designed to verify that you are a "unique human" the Orb takes a photo of your face and eyes, using iris biometrics to confirm your identity. There are apparently 815 Orbs around the world, though the nearest one to me seems to be in Germany, which doesn't seem enormously convenient.
Once you've verified your humanness via app or orb, Razer receives "zero knowledge proof" (i.e. without any attached personal data) that you are human. This can then be used to verify your identity in any game that supports it. "Using proof of human in Razer ID’s SSO integration, game developers can leverage on a new framework to conveniently implement features such as anti-botting, anti-bullying, and user authentication," claims Razer's website.
Which brings us to the big question, what games use it? Well, the example Razer cites is a game called "Tokyo Beast", which producer Naoki Motohashi describes in a video about Razer ID as "one of the world's largest new blockchain games". Ah.
I visited the Tokyo Beast website to try to find out what kind of game it is, but almost everything on the site seems to be about how much money you can win by playing, without actually explaining what the game is about. I did find a link to the game's white paper, however, and from what I can glean it seems to be about buying and selling NFTs of absolutely godawful fox ladies with multiple tails, with some heavy gacha mechanics thrown in. If Tokyo Beast isn't a scam, it does an extremely good job of resembling one.
There's no question that bots are a problem in multiplayer gaming. Indeed, they can threaten to ruin a game if left unchecked, as famously happened with Team Fortress 2. And I can see how AI tech could exacerbate the problem. But I don't see any world in which gaming companies sign up en masse to a blockchain based verification system, especially one that uses Tokyo Beast as an example of how it can work.
