I'm struggling to think of any examples of this or reasons for it. The game in the article is a single-player FPS where the developer mints limited runs of cer

I'm struggling to think of any examples of this or reasons for it. The game in the article is a single-player FPS where the developer mints limited runs of certain items and sells them as NFTs. There's no advantage to the players of any scarcity there even. Even with blockchain, you still need a centralized source to generate items. You couldn't trust clients to generate items themselves. (BTW, hosting a server is not that expensive, and if you're selling items, you should easily be able to pay for the maintenance with that profit. Asking me to waste my electricity to make up for the developer not wanting to pay for a server is not a very compelling argument.) And if the game is continually updated or the developer is the only one who can bestow items, you probably have to download updates from the centralized servers anyway to play, either directly or through the blockchain. If you're looking to play with others you didn't trust over LAN in a place with no Internet, I guess it would have an advantage? But it would only work if neither has gotten an item from anyone else more recently than both were online and there would still be easier ways to accomplish it.