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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

> They just protect the object's ID, not its content.

This is very similar to how DRM works (protects the ID, not the content, hence we need DMCAs if someone tries to illegally stream a movie on YouTube or whatever) and it seems to be doing a pretty good job. In spite of everyone hating it, we have the luxury of Spotify, Netflix, Apple+, etc. because of DRM. NFTs definitely have a use case in gaming and digital collectibles; they also happen to be consumer-friendly (unlike the current status quo of digital collectibles). I wish I could sell my thousands of items in WoW for real money, or my Fornite skins for real money, or my unneeded Magic Arena cards for real money, but I'm locked in their ecosystem.

The tokenomnics aspect of Web3 is mainly speculation, which imo also has a use case, but it most likely will be impacted by some much-needed regulation.

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> I wish I could sell my thousands of items in WoW for real money, or my Fornite skins for real money, or my unneeded Magic Arena cards for real money, but I'm locked in their ecosystem.

That's exactly it: you may wish it, but the reason it won't happen isn't that NFTs weren't invented yet, it's that companies making these products really don't want you to. One simple reason is that it might make someone else play less if they could all those items by just paying a little money.

The other reason why selling in-game items for real money will never be permitted (again) is all the gigantic legal crap that it brings along. If the items are worth real money, you can sue Blizzard or other players for events which unfairly make you lose an item, or affect the value of the items you hold.

> If the items are worth real money, you can sue Blizzard or other players for events which unfairly make you lose an item, or affect the value of the items you hold.

This isn't true at all, because Magic (the card game) already has a vibrant secondary market with no legal problems. They nerf/buff cards all the time.

People like you are just pushing back so vehemently because it's popular to hate on crypto and NFTs right now. Rightfully so, even, as there's tons of scams out there, but that doesn't mean the idea and technology is interesting or useful.

> They nerf/buff cards all the time.

This is not true. It is exceedingly rare for paper cards to be nerfed or buffed. The only real notable example is with the Companion mechanic from a few years ago. Wizard's solution is to ban problematic cards.

> People like you are just pushing back so vehemently because it's popular to hate on crypto and NFTs right now.

And people like you hop into threads pushing your ideas forwards _so vehemently_ without disclosing your financial interest and involvement.

Magic: The Gathering was designed from the beginning as a Trading Card Game. Very importantly, it is a physical game, where the laws of physics prevent trivial copying of their cards, while the laws of copyright prevent them from stopping people selling the cards they bought.

There is also no way for someone to exploit a flaw in MTG and gain access to all of your cards to sell. Conversely, if someone exploited a bug to steal your WoW account and sell off your items for thousands of dollars, you would sue Blizzard for damages. Even worse, if you did something against their terms of service and they wanted to ban you, they would probably have to have some way to compensate you for all the items you would lose access to.

Further, WotC they actually do have problems because of this trading: they have had to create a list of cards they promise not to reprint, because of all the backlash from traders who perceived a re-print of Black Lotus as "flooding the market". Afterwards, they once wanted to still go ahead with a re-print of these cards with some special features, and again faced serious backlash and threats of lawsuits, so they backed down.

DRM protects a particular version of the content from being copied.

NFT does not perform an equivalent function. Be infinitely more useful if it did.

genuine question: what is the value of a virtual artifact outside of the sofware where it is played? What would one do with a token of a lotus123 addon?

There's probably a niche market. Some people collect boxed games or software so maybe there's some VR/AR collectable shelf in the future to put them on, but then the price needs to reflect that its some bobble collecting virtual dust on a virtual shelf.

> In spite of everyone hating it, we have the luxury of Spotify, Netflix, Apple+, etc. because of DRM.

I doubt this. All of these services have one thing in common: it's easier to just subscribe than it is to torrent the content. It's not particularly difficult to find original-quality torrents of Netflix content, for example.

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