That Square Enix “Symbiogenesis” trademark isn’t Parasite Eve related… it’s NFTs

A little while ago, eagle-eyed trademark spotters noticed that Square Enix had trademarked the term “Symbiogenesis” in Japan. Many pointed out that the term “Symbiogenesis” is a term to describe an evolutionary theory in which two organisms come together to form a single entity while adopting attributes of its two bits of “source material”. Those people also pointed out that this was, at least in part, the basis for Square Enix’s PS1-era survival horror action RPG Parasite Eve.

Naturally, this fuelled speculation that Square Enix would be either rebooting or remastering Parasite Eve in some way. It wouldn’t be out of the question for them, since they’ve brought out a number of PS1 remasters in the last couple of years, including Chrono Cross, SaGa Frontier and Legend of Mana. The main sticking point with Parasite Eve is a trademark issue — since the game was licensed from a novel by Hideaki Sena, it’s not quite such an easy process to re-release it.

Some people rather generously assumed that Square Enix may have trademarked “Symbiogenesis” as a means of resurrecting Parasite Eve without actually calling it Parasite Eve. There was no indication as to what the trademark might have actually been for, though — be it a new entry in the series, a complete remake of its earlier installments or a simple remaster of the PS1 versions for today’s platforms.

Unfortunately, it turns out, Symbiogenesis none of those things. Do you want to know what it is? It’s fucking NFTs, because of course it is.

Specifically, Symbiogenesis is a “collectible NFT art project” that is coming in spring of 2023, and promises players the opportunity to “untangle the story”. So far, the official Twitter account for the project has posted a trailer that tells us absolutely nothing other than the fact it involves NFTs, which naturally has already attracted the ire of pretty much everyone.

Indeed, at the time of writing the announcement tweet has not attracted a single positive comment from anyone, aside from a rather ambiguous emoji response from a zero-follower account that is almost certainly a bot.

Square Enix deciding to jump in on the NFT fad this late is baffling, since there have already been a significant number of high-profile failures in the space to date — not to mention universally negative reactions from press and public alike to anything which even looks a little bit like NFTs.

One would think that a company as large as Square Enix would have the good sense to look at the way people have responded to similar projects in the past before going all-in on their own. But, as we’ve seen a number of times previously, that is not how big business appears to work these days. It seems that every business attempting to jump in on the NFT fad has the arrogance to assume that they are the one who is going to make it work for people.

But no. No-one wants NFTs aside from the worst kind of absolute fuckhead. Pretty much everyone was super-hyped for Symbiogenesis being the potential return of Parasite Eve in some form. And instead we got this.

Life in 2022, folks. When a big, established company would rather go in search of volatile big bucks rather than a sure-fire route to widespread goodwill with its audience. I’d be more angry about this if it wasn’t so depressingly commonplace these days.

As it stands, all we can really do is make it clear to companies like Square Enix that this is not what we want by not giving them our money — and, in the meantime, we should all use our time and money wisely to support smaller developers and publishers who are not doing utterly dumbass things like this.

Apologies to anyone who has had their day ruined by this as much as I have. That video of Taro Yoko rolling around on the floor yelling “shit Square Enix” has never felt so apt.

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Pete Davison

Pete is Rice Digital's editor, and a proud champion of any and all games involving pretty girls hanging out, saving the world or both. His first waifu was Rit from Rod Land.

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