I dont think that´s based in reality.
Since you are bringing up market research, how many indies release on none of the big plattforms and actually make a decent amount of money?
Now you are saying they forego releasing on any of those plattforms and the lost revenue from that is going to be made up from people being able to resell their game, which the developer wont see any profit from?
I just dont see any way to make that profitable, even though I see the point your making
But the developer would see profit from people being able to resell their game, that's the whole point. I could perfectly see a party like Devolver do this. They have enough clout and games to make a basic store but nowhere near the infrastructure to set up their own private marketplace.
My main argument in this is really just that people keep pointing to big marktleaders who've had a grip on the marketplace AND the infrastructure for a decade and say "look they haven't done it so obviously no developer or publisher want to do it" while the whole idea behind blockchains is to move away from that kind of centralized power. Yeah, ofcourse Steam isn't going to allow it, why would they? They're king of the world. They'd be giving up power. It's the other that have alot to gain.
This is never going to happen precisely because there is no way to make more money from a resale vs just having someone buy the full purchase again. The entire concept of a "used" digital good doesn't make sense, it's the same item. It's why the entire industry has been so adamant about not letting us re-sell games at all, they don't make as much money as a new sale. Even without the logistical mess involved with "selling" the game or NFT or whatever (that, again, would mean said company doing more work so that they can earn less money), it's never going to be worth more than simply directing an interested buyer to a new sale.
What logistical mess with selling an NFT? It doesn't cost the company anything to make one.
What incentive does Epic have to create a reseller market versus just directing people to buy a new copy? What incentive does a theoretical indie dev have? Again, this is the same industry that treats every "used" sale as a lost new sale, always has, and these used digital purchases are all but indistinguishable from a brand new one. Why would they go out of their way to cannibalize their own sales from their own stores by creating this ecosystem?
What incentive does GOG have with selling DRM-free games? If they research it and -IF- projections are more people are likely to buy their products if it's possible for them to recoup the cost by reselling the game when they're done with it, it's a win for everyone.
Let's say I'm an indie developer. I make a game, and I price it at 30 USD and I hope I'll sell 300k copies of it. That's 9 million revenue, of which 30% goes to Steam, so 6.3 million for me.
To make the same revenue I do on Steam but I self publish, I'd need to sell 210.000 copies of my game. Very unlikely without the power of Steam, AND I'd need to cover infrastructure costs like servers and a storefront.
If I make the game an NFT and I allow reselling where there is a 50/50 split when a user resells the game for let's say an average of 20 USD (so 10 USD for the seller, 10 USD for me), I don't need any servers. All I need is a way to link the NFT to a user on a blockchain and to verify the user each time he logs in to the game and check the NFT status linked to the user. Now I'd need to project how many people are likely to buy the game at full price and how many % of those people are likely to resell the game afterwards. Are more people likely to try my game because they can easily resell it and recoup 10 USD? How good is my game and how likely are they to resell it? Those are still open questions. But in any case, the treshold to reach profitability is already lower because I get 100% of the revenue of each new game sold, I get 50% of the revenue of each game resold and I don't have to upkeep a complicated storefront or keep any server infrastructure running. Will this get me beyond the 6.3million I would've gotten from Steam? I'm pretty sure any publishers not Valve is already doing the calculations.
