The guarantees, precisely
The item is yours in the chain's state. It sits in pallet-emp-nft or pallet-dynamic-nft under your account. The game studio cannot delete it from the chain; it can only stop recognising it in the game.
You can transfer it unless the collection was created non-transferable (pallet-sbt), in which case nobody can — including the studio.
You can sell it anywhere on chain, and the studio's royalty is applied by the transfer itself (pallet-nft-royalties). A marketplace cannot skip it; you cannot avoid it; the studio cannot raise it after the fact except under the collection's rules.
An item can own items. pallet-nft-wallet: your character holds its inventory as an account; sell the character, the inventory goes with it.
Traits change only under rules. pallet-dynamic-nft lets the studio update a level or durability, but only the traits and under the policy set at collection creation — visible on chain.
You never needed DMS. Session keys let you play without a prompt per action; a paymaster lets the studio pay your fees.
The limits, equally precisely
The game is not on chain. What the item does — its stats, its art, its use — lives on the studio's servers. If the studio shuts down, you own a record with no game behind it. The chain guarantees the record, not the world.
Interoperability is a promise studios make, not one the chain enforces. Another game may read your item; nothing compels it.
Value is a market. DMS has no market; test items have no value; the DEX has settled a handful of swaps.
What exists
The pallets, in runtime 220. pallet-gaming (69) for game and item-class registry, pallet-randomness for drops. No game. No engine SDK. No item ever minted by a game on the public testnet.
The bright future
The page this replaces promised one for play-and-own on another chain. This page lists eight guarantees and three limits, all true today, and waits for a studio to test them.
Based on PALLET_REFERENCE.md and EIP_COVERAGE.md.