Sega will drop NFTs if their fans see them as a money-making scheme, news confirmed in a recently held 2021 management meeting at the company.
The news that Sega will drop NFTs if fans aren’t happy comes after initial teases from their Japanese counterpart that they would begin selling NFTs of some kind. Fans naturally weren’t happy, so the company is now taking a more cautious approach to the medium.
Here’s the full blurb from Sega:
In terms of NFT, we would like to try out various experiments and we have already started many different studies and considerations but nothing is decided at this point regarding play to earn. There have been many announcement about this already including at overseas but there are users who shows negative reactions at this point. We need to carefully assess many things such as how we can mitigate the negative elements, how much we can introduce this within the Japanese regulation, what will be accepted and what will not be by the users. Then, we will consider this further if this leads to our mission “Constantly Creating, Forever Captivating”, but if it is perceived as simple money-making, I would like to make a decision not to proceed.
It’s unclear if the speaker here is SEGA CEO Haruki Satomi, but the company seems to have picked up on the typically dubious nature of NFTs and has chosen to be more cautious. Their stance is very different compared to other gaming companies like Electronic Arts, Konami, Ubisoft, and even Square Enix – who seem to be aggressively embracing them.
I’m stoked that Sega seems to have done a potential 180 on embracing them for their games. NFT schemes seem to be an emerging new way to scam financially illiterate souls. The explosion of them reminds me of how “modern art” is just a convenient way to launder money.
The concept of NFTs has been meme’d relentlessly due to “owners” of NFTs losing their minds when internet users can right clicking and save their overpriced garbage digital files. The injection of NFTs into all facets of society seems to not be going away anytime soon. Our social media is constantly inundated with phishing bot replies anytime crypto or NFT terms are even mentioned or uttered online.
At this point, it’s anyone’s call how the industry will follow NFTs, and I can’t predict the future. I just hope the future isn’t all of us flying around in floating rocket chairs like the fat people from WALL-E. A future with my virtual McDouble sandwich and virtual girlfriend on our virtual date that I pay for with my Starbucks NFT photo of a coffee cup taking a dump, or something equally absurd.
