Cody McGrath 
Japanese video game producer Square Enix revealed that it will be liquidating its popular Tomb Raider property for $300 million and investing the funds into blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud computing technologies.
Crystal Dynamics, a Square Enix subsidiary that generated $92 million in revenue in its fiscal year ending March 2021, is the primary developer of Tomb Raider.
Aside from Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Interactive, a subsidiary that will be sold, own the intellectual property for Deus Ex, Thief, and Legacy of Kain.
Both companies’ shares, as well as Square Enix Montreal’s, will be transferred to Embracer Group AB in Sweden. Between July and September of this year, the agreement is likely to be completed.
Since its start in 1996, the Tomb Raider franchise has sold more than 88 million units. About 40 percent of the sales came from the franchise’s rebooted trilogy consisting of Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Shadows of the Tomb Raider, while the rest came from purchases of the original game. Additionally, the series saw over 53 million paid mobile downloads from games such as Lara Croft: Relic Run.
As previously reported Yosuke Matsuda, CEO of Square Enix, outlined intentions for blockchain, metaverse, and nonfungible tokens integration at the beginning of the year.
The CEO sees the development of play-to-earn blockchain games as a major pillar of industry growth and predicts that 2022 will be a year of escalating metaverse buzz.