When Diablo III was released, it featured real money auction house for all in-game items, and while some players made a lot of money from it, the majority of the community hated it and it was soon removed.
True, Diablo 3 RMAH ended up as a failure.
Most of the gamers are not interested in making money from games, in fact they are very much against the trading of gameplay items - if you played WoW, you know how much the community hates gold sellers.
While it's true that some are not interested in making money from games, there are plenty of those that are interested in spending money for stuff in game. Regarding community hating gold sellers, seems like you and I played a different game. People hated those that were exploiting the game via bots and hacks, while huge amount of people were buying and selling gold. Hell, interest for gold was so huge (despite numerous bans) that in the end Blizzard started doing for what once they perma banned players - selling people gold in exchange for money, while in the same time those that farmed gold can exchange it for gametime, and even sell Blizzard games (that part is breaking TOS, but it's still a popular way to cash out).
Now imagine if Blizzard turned their WoW token into a blockchain token - now there's suddenly an extra huge incentive to run bots, scam people, hack accounts, etc. because there's an easy way to turn in-game money into real money.
Did implementation of WoW tokens brought more hacks and bots? If it wasn't for that change, subscription numbers would be down by like 50% and instead they are making shit load of money by pushing (to some degree as those still exist) gold resellers out.
But I believe this model isn't even profitable, because it pushes players away from the game.
Not necessarily, if economy part of the game implemented well. The one I hope will done that right is
Gold Fever so you might wanna check it out as closed beta should come out by the end of the year.