To celebrate the anniversary of environmental-themed Final Fantasy, 7 Square Enix creates NFTs and casts herself in the Shinra role.
In a move that hardly pleases anyone, Square Enix partners with NFT company Enjin to package digital NFT collectibles along with physical action figures every 25e birthday of Final Fantasy 7. This continues the trend of gaming companies choosing the most inappropriate combinations for NFT products. Sega previously announced: Sonic the hedgehog-related NFTs, a franchise with a strong environmental message as Sonic fought Dr. Robotnic to protect flora and fauna from the mad scientist. The initial conflict of Final Fantasy 7 turned the heroic resistance group Avalanche against the Shinra Corporation, a company that offered the planet’s lifeline to power their Mako reactors. Seeing a game with such a message used in conjunction with environmentally destructive NFT production is particularly bad news to fans about the developer.
There is no doubt that NFTs, whether associated with digital art or video games, are bad for the environment, as the process of generating blockchain-based authentication for a file consumes absurd amounts of power. Where Shinra at least harmed the planet to run a power grid for a city, Square Enix is now doing the same for the confusing profit of NFTs. This makes the modern Square Enix closer to Shinra than ever, illustrating that the real message of Final Fantasy 7 has nothing to do with environmental awareness, and everything to do with establishing a popular IP and squeezing every possible profit out of it, regardless of the cost to our real planet.
NFTs, or non-replaceable tokens, use the same blockchain technology used by cryptocurrencies to generate a complex digital “certificate” that artificially designates a particular file, otherwise functionally identical to any other copy, if on one or the other way unique because it is “authenticated”. In an article by VentureBeatthe publication notes that Enjin, the NFT vendor Square Enix has partnered with, is “committed to being carbon neutral by 2030‘, which will add seven years of unnecessary pollution, while an easier and more immediate solution is to stop making NFTs.
Final Fantasy 7’s Shinra Harms the Environment for Better Reasons Than NFTs
Unlike the dilemmas of finding eco-friendly ways to power people’s homes or the vehicles they use, NFTs aren’t necessary at all. They offer nothing to consumers as digital marketplaces have functioned for years without resorting to blockchain-based tactics. When Square Enix sold the Tomb Raider IP and most of its western development studios at the Embracer Group, many fans were concerned about their announcement of plans to use the funds to invest in NFTs, and the FF7 partnership with Enjin confirms those fears. Comparing typical NFT production flow expenditures with data from the Energy Information Administration shows that these blockchain certificates generate approximately 120 pounds of CO2 for each completed NFT “verified”.
Enjin now claims to be carbon negative, but this is based on their purchase of carbon credits, not the NFT creation process, meaning the company is trying to compensate for the environmental damage they could have avoided altogether by simply not making NFTs. Square Enix’s NFT plans to generate more revenue FF7 harm our planet, and show contempt for the Final Fantasy 7 fans who appreciated the message by acting against everything the game stood for – all to produce meaningless digital certifications that no one really needs.
Sources: VentureBeat, Enjin
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