Square Enix Triples Down on Blockchain With New Deal Even as Other Publishers Flee

ign.com:

While many gaming companies largely got the hint last year that gamers aren't keen on blockchain, NFTs, and all that web3 entails, Square Enix doesn't seem to have absorbed the message yet. And it's demonstrating this today via a partnership with web3 gaming platform Elixir, with the intent of "generating visibility and adoption of web3 games among traditional gamers."

The official announcement is light on details as to what, exactly, these two companies will be doing together, calling this a "strategic partnership" intended to "drive mass adoption [of web3 gaming] during 2023." Elixir itself is a PC games distribution platform that puts web3 games and regular games side-by-side, with little to distinguish between them.

Notably, Elixir partnered earlier this year with Epic Games to allow users to play any game in their Epic library "next to your fav web3 games". Basically, the idea seems to be that if it stuffs enough non-web3 games next to web3 games, players won't be able to tell the difference and will get really, really into web3 gaming.

Given its recent activities, it's unsurprising that Square Enix is digging its heels in on this. At the start of the year, then-president Yosuke Matsuda said that the company's vision for 2023 included "aggressive investment" into blockchain technology and NFTs. While Matsuda himself stepped down last month, his vision appears to have remained intact, as demonstrated by a recent set of Final Fantasy 7 NFT trading cards. It's an ironic choice given the themes at play in Final Fantasy 7, but that didn't bother Square Enix last year either when it made a Cloud Strife action figure that was also an NFT.

Web3, blockchain, and NFTs have remained deeply controversial in gaming, though