As with any trend that is pretty bad for the gaming industry, the big studios are tripping over themselves to get on the bandwagon. NFTs are everywhere - try as you might, you can't escape them. Ubisoft, Square Enix, GameStop, and as of today, Troy Baker have all thrown their hats into the ring. Originally, Sega looked to be much more apprehensive about getting involved, and was actually listening to the overwhelmingly negative feedback on social media. Now, however, we know that isn't likely to be the case.
As spotted by VGC, Sega has registered a trademark in Japan for "Sega NFT". This comes complete with a new logo, showing that the company has in fact put quite some effort into planning its expansion into the controversial practice. This comes a week after a spokesperson said that the studio would give them a miss if they appeared to be "simple money-making", not adding anything positive to its games.
The trademark application was put forward in December 2021, weeks before the company claimed that it was gauging feedback before making a decision. This gives us two possibilities: either the recent statement wasn't the most honest one in the world, or Sega is simply laying the groundwork in case it decides to go ahead with the plans. However, if the latter case is true, it's unlikely that it will find many positive incidents of NFT implementation in games.
So far, NFT games have either had to be scrapped, or taken down over legal concerns. The only noteworthy exception to this has been Ubisoft Quartz, which saw playable "digits" added to Ghost Recon Breakpoint - much to the ire of players. The announcement trailer currently sits at 1.7k likes, against 43k dislikes (thank you, Return YouTube Dislike Chrome extension).
If Sega ploughs ahead, who knows what games we'll see them in. Yakuza? Persona? Sonic? Please, don't bring back the Chao garden just to make them all NFTs, I beg of you.