English

Tree Polymatrix Games are PPAD-hard

Computer Science and Game Theory 2020-02-28 v1 Computational Complexity

Abstract

We prove that it is PPAD-hard to compute a Nash equilibrium in a tree polymatrix game with twenty actions per player. This is the first PPAD hardness result for a game with a constant number of actions per player where the interaction graph is acyclic. Along the way we show PPAD-hardness for finding an ϵ\epsilon-fixed point of a 2D LinearFIXP instance, when ϵ\epsilon is any constant less than (21)/20.2071(\sqrt{2} - 1)/2 \approx 0.2071. This lifts the hardness regime from polynomially small approximations in kk-dimensions to constant approximations in two-dimensions, and our constant is substantial when compared to the trivial upper bound of 0.50.5.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2002.12119,
  title  = {Tree Polymatrix Games are PPAD-hard},
  author = {Argyrios Deligkas and John Fearnley and Rahul Savani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.12119},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:56:07.532Z