02 / 06

The fix

Six months after a game launches, the digital copy becomes a tradeable, lendable asset.

You set the price. Buy it now, auction, or best offer. The market decides what a game is worth — not the platform.

You can lend it to a friend for a month, at no cost. Token transfers to them. Save data stays. Auto-returns unless they pay to keep it.

The platform takes 30% on every transfer. Splits across the hosting platform (12%), the developer (9%), and the publisher (9%). Same rule on every storefront.

The $70 launch price holds because the first six months are exclusive. After that, the secondhand market does the rest of the value work.

The digital rights stay with you forever. No TTL. No expiry. No platform dependency. If Sony goes bankrupt tomorrow, your copy is still yours.

For the people who want a physical copy, the disc still does real work — rewritable for patches, unwritable for the token.

03 / 06

How the market works

Consumer sets the price. Platform takes a cut. Same rule on every storefront.

You set the rules and the price. The platform only takes a cut on every transfer. 30% splits across the hosting platform, the developer, and the publisher.

Resale

Buy it now at your price (floor $1), auction to the highest bidder, or list with best offer. Like eBay, not a curated marketplace. 30% commission, same rules for every major storefront.

$0.30 out of every dollar — ~12¢ platform, 9¢ developer, 9¢ publisher. The same split whether you're selling on PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, or the eShop.

Lending

Token transfers to a friend at no cost. Save data stays on their console. Auto-returns in a month unless they pay to keep it.

Gantt-style timeline showing a one-month loan period, an auto-return trigger, and save data retained on the friend's console

The friction is the point. Auto-return forces a decision: pay to keep (and the standard transfer commission applies), or hand it back (no cost).

04 / 06

The physical disc

The CD was never playing the game. Make the disc do real work.

Modern games always install to the internal drive. The disc's job is the token + the patches, not the bytes. Two zones, doing two different jobs.

Rewritable. Game patches get written here when devs release updates. Day-one fixes, post-launch patches — all stored on the disc itself, by the console or a USB-C drive. The disc is always current.

Unwritable. Just the NFT token / key-value pair. Your proof of ownership. Can't be rewritten, can't be faked.

Result: if Sony goes bankrupt, if the servers die, if World War V — your disc still works. It already has the latest version of the game. No TTL on the token.

A physical game disc with a glowing holographic NFT token overlay on a dark reflective surface

Physical + digital

The CD was never playing the game anyway — modern games always install to the internal drive. So the disc's job is the token and the saves, not the bytes.

05 / 06

Subscriptions

Keep them. Just limit them to <$20 retail and AI-generated.

The $70 day-one price is the norm for AAA — the prestige holds. Indie and AA games stay sold — subscription is just one channel among many. Subscriptions are the right shape for the cheap tier: <$20 retail and the coming AI-generated deluge.

A stylized digital landscape representing AI-generated game worlds, abstract pixel art blending with neon circuitry

AI games deluge

AI-generated<$20 retailEphemeralRoguelikeSubscription-tier

"I do think we should keep subscriptions, but limit it to games that we're probably only going to retail for <$20 or are AI-generated."

— From the response to Gameranx

↑

Prestige games ($70) — the AAA model: cinema window, tradeable resale, no subscription. The prestige and the price both hold.

↔

Indie and AA games are sold. Same cinema window, same resale market, just at the $20–$40 tier. Subscription is one channel — not the default.

↓

<$20 retail + AI-generated. The subscription tier. Cheap, infinite, ephemeral — perfect for the AI deluge that's coming.

06 / 06

URGENT · DECISION POINT

Make this work before the industry faces a seriously existential state.

Already here. So we should be considering this now — before the worst case, not after.

The $70 model works

The cinema window protects the premium launch. The secondhand market does the rest of the value work. No "escape velocity" needed.

Real ownership, real agency

Resell, lend, set your own price. The platform earns on every transfer — forever, not once. The publisher and developer earn too.

Physical still has a home

Smaller physical supply, but the disc still does real work — rewritable for patches, unwritable for the token. Everyone else gets real ownership back. Subscriptions keep the AI / indie / cheap tier.

John Zealand-Doyle · 6 slides · in response to Gameranx · August 2026