Square Enix launches its first NFT project

What had once been a harbinger of dark times to come is now a reality. Square Enix has finally announced its NFT (or Non-Fungible Token) project after threatening us with the company’s embrace of the controversial and largely reviled by gamers blockchain technology.

To facilitate this extraordinary waste of fan goodwill, Square Enix has partnered with Enjin, an NFT company that will store Square Enix’s tokens on its Efinity blockchain. Starting today, consumers will be able to pre-order a physical action figure that comes with a code that can be redeemed for a digital NFT. There will also be physical trading cards that similarly have a digital NFT component available for pre-order later this year.

If you’re wondering which of the many franchises Square Enix is ​​pulling these NFTs from, well, that’s the worst part. In perhaps the most astonishing case of “Didn’t read the source material you created,” Square Enix makes its NFTs from Final Fantasy VII– the relatively obscure indie game about a bunch of freedom fighters who take down a corporation that’s killing the planet.

Yes, you read that right. Square Enix chooses to make its NFTs—a technology known for consuming exorbitant amounts of energy that contribute to wildly increased emissions and accelerate already-out-of-control climate change on a planet that’s either burning, drowning, or melting—out of characters it created as was dedicated to stopping companies from doing exactly what an NFT facilitates.

The math is not math.

Currently, there are no images available of what the action figure or trading cards will look like or how much they will cost. In an environment where gaming-related NFTs are often met with fast and furious backlash, on top of the steep price drop of all things cryptocurrency, these are also not known FFVII NFTs will have value other than sentimental.

Square Enix

Facing an inevitable backlash, Square has chosen to focus on the use of Efinity Parachain, a layer 1 proof-of-stake solution that touts itself as “eco-friendly” and is run by a company committed to being carbon neutral by 2030. It promises being more power efficient than older Bitcoin or Ethereum blockchain technology, and with bridges connecting different blockchains without relying on them and their energy-hungry ways of operating.

But the planet is dying, Cloud, we don’t have much time.