'Tomb Raider' developer Square Enix sells off $300 million in IP and studios to invest in blockchain tech

The Japanese video game company Square Enix, which is behind popular titles such as Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest, signed a deal Monday to sell off some of its intellectual property and studios in order to fund new blockchain, AI and cloud investments.

Swedish gaming firm Embracer is paying Square Enix $300 million for two North America-based studios, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Interactive, and the popular game series Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief and Legacy of Kain, among others.

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The move is in line with Square Enix's growing interest in blockchain gaming. At the beginning of 2022, the company's president Yosuke Matsuda said that the firm intended to invest more in blockchain technology throughout the year. 

Square Enix first got into NFTs in March of 2021 after partnering with the Japanese blockchain gaming tech company Double Jump Tokyo, creating digital assets for the video game franchise Million Arthur.

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MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.