Square Enix began 2022 with a letter from President of the company Yosuke Matsuda that announced that Square Enix is interested in exploring a series of new and controversial online technologies moving forward. These include metaverses, NFTs, and games that utilize a blockchain structure.
Fan backlash to the announcement was immediate, as it has been for any game company that floats the idea to players of possibly creating NFTs in the future. Despite the backlash, however, Square Enix received a huge bump in stock on the day of trading after the letter was published. This left the company in the difficult position of either listening to its fans or listening to the stock market.
Evidently, Square Enix seems to be following its stocks because, in an interview iwth Yahoo Japan, Yosuke Matsuda has once again reiterated his desire for the company to make blockchain games. The company president’s interest in publishing games on the blockchain seems to center around perpetuating a new "play-to-earn" model of game in which players could earn rewards for creating content for the game. Matsuda states, “I believe that there will be a certain number of people whose motivation is to play to contribute.”
Matsuda’s description of “contributing players” sounds like having an open modding community who create content for the game and receive rewards from Square Enix for doing so. Matsuda also claims that rewards for digital creations could revitalize user-created content. It's arguable whether the video game modding community needs revitalizing, however, as some games have active groups that make free player-made mods. Also, other games like Roblox are built entirely around this player-generated structure but don’t use blockchain technology.
Paying users for player-made content in a game, either with real currency or in-game rewards, also casts shadows over the content’s ownership. Anything created in Square Enix’s game obviously can't be owned by the player. But the concepts for many popular titles began as mods for other games, such as The Forgotten City which famously began as a mod for Skyrim. But if a player has already been "rewarded" for the concept, the content's ownership may go entirely to Square Enix.
There is also an ownership problem if neither Square Enix nor the player own the player-made content. One of the most popular types of mod for any game are those that add items or characters from other pop culture media, such as using a mod to turn Skyrim into Star Wars. Usually a legal blind-eye is turned to this, as its user-generated content with no money involved. But if Square Enix wants to let players be paid for creating content in its game, the company will need to iron out the question of ownership first.
Source: VGC