This is one of the problems that BAR solves beautifully - a player could leave and rejoin later and the game would continue running just fine. An existing player can choose to take their stuff or not, or take it and give it back when the player rejoins. Truly elegant.
BAR in general is such a great showcase in A) FOSS games can be good, work great, scale nice and be fun and B) BAR is a game built by gamers who play and enjoy their own game, for other gamers, which seems more and more rare these days.