This month's Networking & Multiplayer category includes 3 granted patents from Magnopus, Microsoft, and Tencent, with 1 patent from each company.
The patents address infrastructure challenges in multiplayer gaming across different scales and platforms. Magnopus describes a platform-agnostic system for massively multiplayer XR environments that supports cross-region communication and auto-scaling without traditional sharding constraints. Microsoft's patent covers technology that enables local split-screen play in online-only games by running multiple instances and routing inputs to a single display, while Tencent's approach uses hybrid server-client processing that handles visible entities on the client side and non-visible entities server-side to support ultra-large player counts.
Magnopus received 1 patent for a cross-platform MMO infrastructure designed to support massively multiplayer experiences across AR, VR, and desktop environments without the typical limitations of server sharding. The system allows players across different regions to interact seamlessly by using absolute-value messaging rather than traditional delta-based approaches, which provides automatic recovery from packet loss. Server instances scale dynamically based on player load, and users can traverse virtual distances without encountering reload periods or invisible boundaries between server partitions.
Microsoft received 1 patent addressing the decline of local multiplayer features in modern games. The technology creates split-screen experiences for online-only titles by running multiple game instances simultaneously and combining them through a compositing layer that manages both input routing and display output. This approach works around hardware limitations that might prevent rendering multiple perspectives on a single machine while also compensating for developers who no longer implement native split-screen support in their titles.
Tencent received 1 patent for a hybrid processing architecture that distributes game logic calculations between servers and clients based on what players can actually see. The system automatically assigns server-side processing to entities outside a player's visible area while keeping visible elements on the client side, creating a middle ground between pure client-side frame synchronization and fully server-authoritative models. This visibility-based workload distribution aims to maintain synchronization efficiency while supporting games with very large numbers of simultaneous players.