Sega will likely not introduce NFTs for play-to-earn if 'perceived as simple money-making'

The leadership at video game firm Sega Corporation’s holding company has suggested that they may avoid nonfungible tokens in play-to-earn model games based on the response from users.

In a Dec. 14 meeting of Sega Sammy Holdings’ CEO Haruki Satomi, senior executive vice president Koichi Fukazawa, and Sega Corporation President Yukio Sugino, the trio said they needed to “carefully assess” how to potentially introduce nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, into Sega titles to “mitigate the negative elements” and work within Japanese regulations. The executives cited “negative reactions” from users overseas rewarded in NFTs for gameplay.

“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],” said Sega. “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.”

The executives added that any rollout of NFTs in play-to-earn model games would “be better to work with partners on new technologies and domains [...] rather than dealing with them in-house.” It’s unclear how the video game company intends to move forward with gauging user interest.

Related: Play-to-earn games are ushering in the next generation of platforms

The Sega Corporation is a Japan-based game developer and a subsidiary of the Sega Group Corporation, which merged with the Sammy Corporation in 2004. The company has been behind many popular games since the introduction of Sonic the Hedgehog in the 1990s — Sega’s latest title in the series, Sonic Frontiers, is scheduled to be released in 2022. In April 2021, the company announced it planned to expand into NFTs through a partnership with game developer double jump.tokyo.

当社は、double jump .tokyo株式会社との協業による、ブロックチェーンの技術を活用したNFTデジタルコンテンツについて、2021年夏頃を目途に販売を開始します。https://t.co/b8pMW6dg9G pic.twitter.com/3idW6RI71z

— セガ公式アカウント (@SEGA_OFFICIAL) April 27, 2021

Should Sega move forward with using NFTs in play-to-earn model games, it would be joining a variety of gaming companies incorporating the technology. In March 2021, France-based game publisher Ubisoft launched One Shot League, a fantasy soccer game developed in collaboration with the Ethereum-based game Sorare.