[wnkrshm]

NFTs are always brought up for game items but I don't understand the non-fungible part of it. A game item or cosmetic is the example par-excellence for a thing that anyone can have a copy of - I don't get why there has to be artificial scarcity in that at all.

[lui8906]

Perhaps you're not playing modern games where skins and cosmetics already go for a lot of money. Games like Call of Duty, Apex Legends etc.. Cosmetics in these games have a rarity rating and single items can go for hundreds of dollars. They are already artificially scarce, however the user needs to trust the developer that this artificial scarcity will remain in the future post purchase. And that the items will be available (there has been recent examples of developers deleting user accounts with significant $ items on the account).

[notahacker]

NFTS provide no reason to trust the developer about the artificial scarcity; there's absolutely nothing technical stopping them making, say, in-game clothing originally marketed as an expensive NFT the default player skin, or not allowing accounts with linked NFTs to log in. Sure, the NFT holder still has their unique alphanumeric string, but from a gameplay perspective nobody cares.

And from a developer perspective, if game engines were written in a way which made the holders of a certain token impossible to exclude from the game or possess items whose properties couldn't be adjusted for gameplay balance or aesthetics, that would be a bug, not a feature.