> Games don't exist without players.

Of course they do. Just because a game isn't being played doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Or at least, the rules do.

In a world of 7 billion humans, all you need is 2 to be the first movers and start playing. If the game is rewarding to the players, then it will continue to attract more players and grow until the size of the network of players itself becomes a huge part of the value of playing.

Games are just a protocol. And if the protocol is useful and better than other protocols, or has some first/second mover advantage, then the network using the protocol will grow until it saturates the addressable nodes.

> When someone deems it not profitable to mine on a set of 50 GPUs they purchased, they can resell those to gamers.

Except they can't. GPUs used for mining are trash - too much heat and stress continuously.

Think about the average load on a consumer card used normally - maybe a daily 4 hour gaming binge max?

Meanwhile a mining card is running near 100% capacity 24/7, probably without enough cooling.

Lots of professional mining operations will actually undervolt the cards to get them to run more effeciently, decreasing electricity and cooling costs overall. Also there's less thermal stress due to them running constantly, so you don't get the physical stresses of fluctuation between hot/cold cycles.

Assuming the crypto bubble pops catastrophically and never recovers, yes we'll be left with a lot of worthless ASICs and GPUs, but also a ton of newly freed energy sources and chip manufacturing facilities, the development of which will have been funded or subsidized by the crypto speculative craze.

A world with more access to energy and cheaper silicon chips is probably necessary to address the immense challenges civilization is facing.

I have an exactly opposite experience - already got a second card from friends using them for mining when it was not good enough for them. Good price and both still working just fine for gaming. :)