Chess tournament in July 2013 in the Czech Republic. Photo StefanKna / Wikimedia Commons / CC by-sa
In August, the French Chess Federation (FFE, which boasts 68,000 licensees) announced a partnership with the Immortal Game platform. The latter, a company created in 2021, raised 15.5 million euros in 2022. This partnership aroused astonishment and criticism from the French association Lichess.org a few days ago:
A service linked to NFTs?
“The FFE recently announced its partnership with Immortal Game, touting “a French platform, […] with which we share the same values and objectives.” However, Immortal Game is a private company one of whose central aspects concerns cryptocurrencies and NFTs. These assets are currently in the sights of the authorities in Europe and the United States, in particular because of countless frauds and scams in the sector which often target the most vulnerable people, the very people that the FFE has a particular duty to protect.
In contrast to all this, lichess.org is a French association under the 1901 law which has been operating thanks to volunteers and donations for more than ten years. It is the number one chess server in France and two in the world, and all our features are accessible for free and for everyone, without any advertising or trackers.
All our software is free/open-source, meaning it can be reused, shared and improved for free. The State recommends using free software.
In the light of these elements, the common values cited by the federation are far from obvious.
We believe players deserve better. We are also surprised not to have been contacted despite previous collaborations and question the opacity surrounding this designation.”
In addition, adds the association, “Mathilde Choisy, former general director of the FFE, expresses doubts about the legality of this partnership, indicating in a press release that: “the consumer code, article L222-16-2 prohibits sponsorship and patronage when their purpose OR effect is direct or indirect advertising in favor of services on digital assets unless they are PSAN approved (which is not the case for Immortal).”
A meeting report of the FFE steering committee (June 2023) indicates (p. 19):
“Bachar Kouatly asks if the legality of a partnership with Immortal Game which is associated with cryptocurrency has been verified. Éloi Relange reassures him about the seriousness of this French company, whose headquarters is located very close to the Federation and employs 30 employees. He explains that Immortal Game does indeed offer NFTs, with a game mode introducing new rules (for example with a king who cannot play more than 3 times in the game). However, their primary intention is to make a standard gaming platform, where it is possible to play with classic game rules in the same way as on other platforms such as Chess.com or Lichess. The economic model is no longer centered on NFTs.”
5 million games per day
Beyond this controversy, it is an opportunity to highlight the remarkable place that Lichess has made for itself (its article in Wikipedia): created in 2010 by a Frenchman, Thibault Duplessis, the site, under a free license, indicates that it counts more than 5 million games played per day. Supported by an association under the law of 1901, it would thus be the second chess site in the world behind Chess.com, which is a commercial site.
Interviewed at the end of 2022 by Konbini, Thibault Duplessis recounted the genesis of the site, developed little by little. “I brought the 3 basic principles: that the codes and data are free, that no one pays anything, at least not a fixed price, and that there is no advertising or tracker. At the beginning people told me “it will never work, you will end up selling it, putting up ads”… We proved that it was possible to do that!
I remember, at the beginning there wasn’t even a donation system on it. After a while people complained, they wanted me to set up a donation system so they could help me pay for the servers… I didn’t want people to take out their credit cards, the costs were affordable . The community had to insist.
And the people who donate today for Lichess don’t get anything in return, it’s purely selfless. The biggest amount we got must have been 500 euros. The average is around 3 euros.”
“All the work we do is immediately published, so we enrich the chess ecosystem… and there are also plenty of commercial sites that have appeared behind it using part or all of our source code.
Anyone can suggest a modification to the code to correct a bug, add a feature… My job is to read everything, discuss it, and integrate it into the servers. This is truly a project for the chess community and by the chess community.
I also developed the “Study” mode, which allows you to study chess with an AI, to compare your moves with other players… And I’m super proud of it, because that didn’t exist not, and it still doesn’t exist outside of Lichess. This is one of our roles: to promote and encourage the teaching of the practice of chess and its variants. And it goes even further than the source code because we will also publish all our data. All the games, the puzzles, that are played are published… All our costs are public too.
The opposite of our current “competitors”. Commercial servers never distribute their work to anyone, do not accept that anyone contributes, do not share their data… They close everything, aim to compartmentalize everything and lock the players in to make them pay the most possible.”
“Today there are around 150 people in the team, around fifteen of whom are paid. The vast majority take care of moderation, especially to combat cheating and hateful behavior. There are two of us on permanent contracts, employed by the association, without a boss but above all, and it’s fantastic, without a client.”
“A typical open source project”
In May 2021, in an interview with Journal du Net, Thibault Duplessis explained:
“It’s a typical open source project like thousands of others, I was just lucky to be there at the right time. All code is free and anyone can suggest changes, fix bugs or add new features. They offer them to me, we discuss them and then they put them online. There are a lot of contributors, I would have been unable to create all this alone. Between 100 and 200 contributors have created code on Lichess. But that’s not the only way to contribute. There is a lot to do to manage the community. Lichess is a kind of social network for chess with forums, chats… We have a team of around fifty moderators who have become essential. There are teams who will relay all the major tournaments happening around the world. Lichess also pays chess professionals to create content, lessons for example. Our idea is to give people the means to meet their own needs.”
And to a question about being free, unlike other major platforms in the sector:
“Free service is not really at the heart of the project. What is important to us is that it is free software. We don’t want a tracker on the site or offer advertising. We want to offer a quality, free service that people will use and which does not use people. I wanted to show that. There are paid services on the Internet and this is completely normal. We ourselves have hundreds of coaches on Lichess who offer their services, of course for a fee. But Lichess remains free because that’s a promise that was made originally. Furthermore, on Lichess, we have contributors. And many give, as much as they would have given to a paid site for a subscription. We are completely transparent about donations and costs.
Donations cover 100% of our costs.”
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