When you buy a ticket to a movie, a concert, or a theme park, after you're done, you have "nothing" by the argument you're making. Want to ban movies, concerts, and theme parks?

People get value from things that aren't tangible. Many of the most valuable things aren't tangible.

That's not the same. Some people spend thousands of hours and thousands of dollars to level up in some games, they have no recourse if the company shut it down.

For a movie you clearly know what you get into.

your conclusion isn't supported by your premise, which seems to be that it matters how much a person spends. Where is the line?

With a boat, you might spend thousands on consumables. All that you have left is the memories of driving the boat around.

Some guys spend $100k to go motor racing for a season in single-make cars. At the end of it, they don't own anything but any trophies they might have picked up.

If people want to spend money on digital goods, putting up walls to stop or make it harder is unlikely to be successful unless you outright ban it with heavy punishment for use.

That hasn't worked so well for other items in a similar category, and digital goods are completely victimless.

I don't really buy into this argument. Regulating the sale digital goods works. Companies that wish to remain legal will refrain from the sale of digital goods in an illegal manner; mandatory company audits will be a vector governments use to enforce that.

The article and others in the thread have given arguments that digital goods are not victimless. Most societies acknowledge that gambling is harmful; digital gambling with fake money or with time spent in-game is presumably harmful as well.

Owning a boat can be a real drag, though, once the novelty wears off.

Literally a drag...

nice one!