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by wpietri 1670 days ago
Would that be nice? Sure.

Are NFTs likely to do that? No. Why would game/platform creators do a ton of work so they could make less money? And even if they wanted to, which they won't, why would they bless some specific blockchain with that power? If that is at all viable, somebody like Steam or Amazon will want it to be their own digital assets registry that wins. For that, they don't need a blockchain, just a database.

2 comments

Steam has already disallowed "Applications built on blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs." from their platform. They have a very successful item marketplace which they get a cut of and aren't interested in blockchain systems competing. Epic has said they will allow it, presumably to differentiate themselves and because they don't have such a system.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/15/22728425/valve-steam-blo...

>Why would game/platform creators do a ton of work so they could make less money?

I know, right? Or to look at another similar situation: why would Verizon, China Mobile, T-Mobile, and AT&T all make their voice/data networks interoperable?

Obviously, they wouldn't chose to do that.

They do that because of regulation, not because they want to.
Exactly. The early history of telephone systems was rife with refusal to interconnect.

And the analogy is terrible because the whole purpose of telephones is interconnection; the value is in the size of the network. But from the consumer perspective, portability for music purchases or game assets is at best a secondary concern.