Newly published documents reveal that global entertainment giant Sony applied for a patent in 2021 for a system that tracks digital assets in video games using blockchain technology—specifically NFTs. The patent was made public on November 10, 2022.

According to the application, Sony wants to use a distributed ledger, or blockchain, to record digital media assets, gameplay, and video clips and include a unique token for the digital item with a unique identifier and metadata that would identify properties of the digital asset.

A system and method for tracking digital assets associated with video games. The digital assets may be in-game digital assets, such as in-game items or characters. The digital assets may be video game digital media assets representing moments of gameplay of a video game, such as video clips or images. The digital asset is created, and a distributed ledger tracking a history of the digital asset is created and stored across devices. A unique token for the digital asset can include a unique identifier and metadata identifying properties of the digital asset. Changes to properties of the digital asset, such as ownership, visual appearance, or metadata, can be identified in a request to update the history. A new block can be generated for, and appended to, the distributed ledger identifying the changes to the history of the digital asset. The new block can include hashes of previous blocks.