Japan’s video game heavyweights tiptoe into blockchain

TOKYO — Some of Japan’s biggest gaming companies are quietly bringing blockchain technology to their virtual worlds even as the fervor for cryptocurrencies — especially their use in video games — is cooling in much of Asia.

Square Enix, creator of the massively popular Final Fantasy series, set up an internal division in February dedicated to developing blockchain projects. These include Shi-San-Sei Million Arthur, a collection of digital stickers backed by non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, a type of digital proof of ownership. Sales of its digital stickers recently topped 100,000, after the fourth edition of the collection recently went on sale.