Square Enix Invests in HyperPlay

Square Enix expressed excitement about the partnership, expecting it to benefit game developers.

Square Enix, the enduring publisher of beloved series including Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy, announced on Tuesday that it has invested in the crypto-native game launcher HyperPlay. Additionally, Square Enix’s Symbiogenesis will be exclusive to the store.

With the investment referred to as “strategic fundraising” for the platform, HyperPlay declined to divulge its value.

However, anonymous founder JacobC.eth said that he considers the Japanese publisher “the most innovative and forward-thinking among the main game studios” and that it “has always been at the forefront of development.”

Square Enix has been active in the blockchain space for several years, as evidenced by its 2020 investment in the metaverse game platform The Sandbox, its Japanese experimentation with NFT stickers, and its subsequent association of NFTs with premium Final Fantasy VII tangible toys.

The result of this investigation was the release of Symbiogenesis a year ago.

Symbiogenesis, which debuted in December, is a narrative role-playing adventure centered on Ethereum NFT-minted characters.

Square Enix’s Involvement in Blockchain Gaming

Additionally, the game features a variety of in-game tokens minted on the Ethereum scaling network Polygon. In addition to others featured in the announcement made on Tuesday, the collaboration with Square Enix will also include the addition of Symbiogenesis to HyperPlay.

JacobC, a former operations lead for Ethereum wallet MetaMask, elaborated to Decrypt that “policies that conflict with composable smart contracts with Web3 and with all of the kinds of innovation that are occurring today” are frequently the reason why many traditional gaming platforms and marketplaces do not support blockchain games at this time.

The motivation behind his partnership with Square Enix, according to him, was “to take things away from monopolistic platforms that do not have the players’ or developers’ best interests at heart” and to investigate alternative distribution methods.

Square Enix is thrilled to invest in and form a partnership with HyperPlay, according to a statement by Hideaki Uehara, general manager of the company’s investment and business development department.

“We are convinced that the HyperPlay team has created an exceptional product that will facilitate the distribution of games and generate more advantageous business models for game developers.”

Previously, in June of last year, HyperPlay raised $12 million in a Series A round. In addition to inventorying over seventy blockchain-based games, the platform now compiles titles from GOG.com and the Epic Games Store.