Real currency resale markets obviously come with a cost to the publishers, who are the original sellers of the good. However, they also have upsides to the publishers and players.
Magic the gathering is a good example because they have two online versions with different approaches.
In Magic The Gathering Online, you can transfer your digital goods. This means there are all kinds of 3rd parties making the ecosystem more efficient. You can buy and sell cards for real cash on dozens of websites, and you can even pay cash to rent expensive cards from bots. All in game purchases are also done in a tradable currency, so in theory, you could play the game without spending a penny with the publisher, but the publisher is still the origin of all consumable game currency.
The publisher also has a 2nd generation online platform, Magic the Gathering Arena. This version has no transferable assets and no financial ecosystem. They capture every penny, but miss out on users who want a financial exit option, and a ton of free publicity and events hosted by businesses operating in the MTGO ecosystem.
I think this is one of the better examples because Magic is already a collectables card game. That said, similar ecosystems have existed in games like eve online, Diablo, ect...
As with most things, I wonder what the value add is from Crypto, but perhaps it is there. I know some games have struggled with duplication and fake goods, which is particularly problematic when people are paying real cash for them. Perhaps crypto can address this issue
I don't agree with your opinion that item transferability is necessarily silly, though. I was happy to be able to sell the rare Dota 2 items I accumulated after playing it for a couple years. It was never a central motivation for playing, but the transferability didn't detract from the experience in any way. It just made for some nice pocket change when all was said and done.
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Meta remark: It's pretty sad that one of the only HN comments correctly pointing out the disconnect between the article title, the HN knee-jerk reactions, and the actual content of the article, seems about to be downvoted to oblivion. The article is barely 3 paragraphs. Is it too much to ask to read it, before jumping in with the same tired crypto takes as every link to crypto-related resources on HN gets?
I also don't see why any of the companies would be on-board with it, given that accomplishing it would take a lot of development effort for little reward, and the game companies are in this business to maximize their reward.
The creators of Fortnite don't want you to take your DLC with you to play another game. They want you to keep playing Fortnite and spend money in their store.
If you mean transferable as in able to sell an in game asset to another player, Valve has offered that for at least a decade.