In April 2021, at the height of Web 3 Mania, Sega was one of the biggest companies to pledge its future to the scam that was “play to earn”. Now, just two years later and after the ass has completely fallen out of that market, Sega has had a change of heart.
As we wrote at the time, in a story with the headline ‘Sega Wants To Sell NFTs, Can Fuck Right Off’:
Sega Japan announced earlier today that it will be getting into the NFT business, partnering with (and buying a stake in) a company called Double Jump Tokyo, with plans to not only sell character-related tokens, but NFTs in future games as well.
The announcement is thin on details, but as Pocket Gamer reports, Sega hopes this “will be the start of a sequential expansion into a variety of content, including IPs currently in development and new IPs to be released in the future.”
Those plans are now mostly done for. In an interview with Bloomberg, Sega’s co-Chief Operating Officer Shuji Utsumi has said the company will now “withhold its biggest franchises from third-party blockchain gaming projects to avoid devaluing its content”, and will also be “shelving plans to develop its own games in that genre at least for now”.
“We’re looking into whether this technology is really going to take off in this industry, after all”, Utsumi told the site, adding that while its “biggest franchises” are off the table, “lesser known” properties like Three Kingdoms and Virtua Fighter will still be seeing some NFT tie-ins, albeit from third-party providers.
His best quote, however, is where he bluntly says “The action in play-to-earn games is boring. What’s the point if games are no fun?” My guy, we were telling you that in 2021, glad you finally came around.