How are Townforge in-game deposits safe from an exit scam?

Question

Townforge is a fork of Monero which includes a game, and players can deposit some money to the game.

The game is said to be exit scam proof (https://townforge.net/faq/#faq-9). How does this work exactly ?

Answer 1

Most online games are centralized, and money deposited to the game goes to the game operator's wallet, and is represented by an in game balance, which is typically an entry in the game server's central database.

With Townforge, there is no such server/database, as the game state is decentralized, and maintained from the transactions on the Townforge blockchain, which act on that game state.

Part of this state is the set of game accounts and their balances. In the same way that one's wallet balance can only be used with one's secret keys, one's in-game Townforge gold balance may only be used by one's secret keys and by game update rules. These rules are part of the consensus rules, and dictate how much gold one has to pay for land tax, or how much income one receives from one's buildings, among other things. Money deposited to the game is not sent to a third party, but accounted for differently, while still staying in the player's control.

Doing it this way in a predefined manner means two things:

• nobody but the player has access to secret keys giving the power to move that in-game balance
• the game consensus rules can still use a player's in-game balance to update the game state

In particular, it means no game operator has access to other player's money, ever, and are thus unable to grab that money in an exit scam.

Additionally, those rules mean a player can withdraw their in-game balance at any time without asking a game operator, since this balance is controlled by their own keys. A withdrawal from the game is really a blockchain transaction initiated by the player, so it permissionless.