Square Enix launches its first NFT project

What had once been a warning 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 fans’ good-will, 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 redeemable 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 its many franchises Square Enix is pulling these NFTs from, well, that’s the worst part. In what is perhaps the most astounding case of “Didn’t read the source material you created,” Square Enix is making its NFTs from Final Fantasy VII— that relatively obscure indie game about a bunch of freedom fighters taking down a corporation that’s killing the planet.

Yes, you read that right. Square Enix is choosing to make its NFTs — a technology known to consume exorbitant amounts of energy contributing to wildly increased emissions and accelerating already out-of-control climate change on a planet that is either on fire, drowned, or melting — out of characters it created who were dedicated to stopping companies from doing exactly what an NFT facilitates.

The math is not mathing.

Currently, there are no images available of what the action figure or the collectible cards will look like or how much they’ll cost. In an environment where gaming-related NFTs are frequently met with swift and furious backlash, on top of the precipitous fall in price of all things cryptocurrency, it is also not known if these FFVII NFTs will have any value other than sentimental.

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

But the planet’s dyin’, Cloud, we ain’t got that kinda time.