NFTs originated as in-game currency for quasi-paid digital labor

Evidence

There is indeed a category of workers who fall into a grey zone where payment for work beneficial to cloudalists is considered an optional extra. Its origins are to be found in mass multi-player video games where systems of quasi-payments were developed before spreading to many digital platforms or cloud fiefs. Initially, gamers’ own behaviour breathed spontaneously exchange value into certain relative scarce digital artefacts within their gaming environment (e.g. a particular sword or helmet). Soon, they were rewarded by the corporation behind the game with coveted digital items – the first inklings of the NFTs that became all the rage outside the gaming communities in 2020. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 1033

Categorization

• QUESTION: Claims NFTs descend from gamer quasi-payment systems — worth verifying the exact pipeline from in-game items to NFT speculation circa 2020.
• XREF: Plays directly into platform-era immaterial labor debates (Lazzarato, Terranova’s ‘free labour’) the reader’s advanced platform-capitalism project touches. — connects to: Platform ‘gamified’ labor substitutes token payments and rankings for wages — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 1034
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 1033