As companies like Ubisoft and Square-Enix keep going in hard on crypto, others are finally giving up on what have always been losing propositions, and the latter group apparently includes SEGA.
According to a Bloomberg report last night, SEGA announced that it’s not just protecting its major IPs to avoid devaluing them with third-party blockchain insertions; it’s also ending its plans for first-party development of blockchain games and casting doubt on the role of Web 3.0 tech in general. Apparently, a few smaller IPs (Three Kingdoms and Virtue Fighter) will continue down the NFT path, however, and the company won’t rule out using the tech in the future.
“The action in play-to-earn games is boring,” SEGA co-COO Shuji Utsumi says in the piece. “What’s the point if games are no fun?”
Of course, as Bloomberg notes, this seems to be less about boredom and more about the fact that there’s no money in it, as the crypto market has largely collapsed under the weight of scams, unjustified speculation, and regulatory oversight.
The company had originally flirted with NFT games in 2022 with a five-year “SuperGame” project that included NFTs as the “natural extension for the future of gaming,” when just a few months before that it had suggested it would back out of NFT projects if Japanese regulation and players wouldn’t sit for them.
Another reason to use the dead-eyed rappy pic, anyhow. Happy Friday, enjoy your PSO2 scratch tickets.
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