1. you purchase digital items with centralized payment processors like VISA
2. the asset is transferred to your centralized iOS/Steam account. you do not "own" it, the company owns it. if you are banned from Steam, you lose all your games and game purchases.
web3 is asking how these two things can be changed to remove the intermediary.
the best frame for this is not "web3 ideals are not worth pursuing" but "how can we make web3 ideals feasibly work"
similar thing happens in rest of digital art and media worlds. photographers, musicians, and artists all doing NFTs, then later Instagram, Spotify, Adobe, major art auction houses all begin to explore NFTs as they can then capture some of that market.
The indies could do this without crypto. They'd need a standard, Drop-box, and to collaborate on a little messaging system so their payment DBs can update one another. Pow! Same functionality, equivalent level collaboration, no crypto-bro middlemen, 1000th the environmental burden.
PoS removes the environmental burden.