> How does blockchain help with this? The problem isn't that there isn't a record of your purchase on a ledger somewhere, the problem is that the software environment in which your purchase is meaningful is no longer running.

The reason that environment no longer runs is because the company decides it's no longer profitable to run it. Blockchains build incentives to run that environment into the operation, so as long as there are users willing to pay, and the environment is efficient enough, in theory the environment should never not be running.

This gets stronger if you share that environment with multiple games.

> Your "much more straightforward idea" can be summarized as "use them to make money".

Playing poker with friends and being able to use any game's purchased assets in that game doesn't have to be about money. It certainly wouldn't be for me, cause I suck at poker.

>The reason that environment no longer runs is because the company decides it's no longer profitable to run it. Blockchains build incentives to run that environment into the operation, so as long as there are users willing to pay, and the environment is efficient enough, in theory the environment should never not be running.

So why would that need blockchain? If this is a viable model to run the game, why wouldn't game companies have a direct 'pay us to keep up the servers online' model now?

The problem isn't that the record of you buying a skin is gone.

It's that the entire game is gone and its servers are offline.

If we're talking about a casual poker game between friends where money doesn't matter, a verbal agreement that you're staking some additional item should be more than sufficient. Bringing the blockchain into it only makes sense if there's a genuine concern about someone not following through.