CEO says Sega will not proceed with NFTs if they are "perceived as simple money-making"

Sega is reconsidering plans to jump on the NFT bandwagon until it is certain "what will be accepted and what will not be by the users".  

Talking to Tweak Town (thanks, VGC), Sega CEO Haruki Satomi said the publisher would have to "carefully assess" the future of NFTs in its products following "negative reactions" from players but said, "if it is perceived as simple money-making, I would like to make a decision not to proceed".

Sega had announced last April – via a Japanese-language tweet – that it was partnering with another company to start selling NFT digital content that utilized blockchain tech. However, Satomi's comments now hint that the publisher has cooled its approach until it can "mitigate the negative elements".

"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 P2E," Satomi said.

"There have been many announcements about this already including overseas but there are users who show 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."

Satomi's comments come just weeks after GSC Game World – developer of the upcoming Stalker sequel, Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl – similarily u-turned on a decision to introduce NFTs into the highly-anticipated game.

The announcement came less than a day after the team announced an NFT-powered "Stalker Metaverse" and despite insisting Stalker 2 was "not a blockchain-based game" and that NFTs would have "no influence on gameplay", the studio was forced to reverse the decision following a vocal backlash from fans unhappy at the choice to include them. 

"We hear you," the studio said in a brief statement on Twitter. "Based on the feedback we received, we've made a decision to cancel anything NFT-related in Stalker 2."

Read up on our new games 2022 guide for a complete look over all the other games launching over the next few months.