Japanese Gaming Company Gumi Forms Business Alliance with Square Enix and SBI Holdings for Metaverse

Gumi, a Japanese gaming company focused on mobile entertainment, has announced a capital and business alliance with Square Enix, another Japan-based game developer, and SBI Holdings, one of the biggest financial service companies in Japan.

The deal includes the issuance of new shares valued at $52.7 million, which will give SBI Holdings a 22.46% stake in the company, becoming the top shareholder. Square Enix will have a marginal stake of 3.01%, according to regulatory filings.

Gumi's target is the metaverse, and it declared that the funds raised will be invested to grow this new metaverse business at "an even faster rate than ever before."

This pivot towards digital immersive entertainment and the metaverse has marked significance for the future of the company. In a press release explaining the scope and objectives of the alliance, Gumi stated: "The group is working day and night to make the metaverse business a second earnings pillar in addition to the mobile online game business, which is the current mainstay of earnings."

With this strategic alliance, Gumi aims to have a platform to list the tokens it wants to issue as part of its future games strategy. As part of a takeover executed back in May, SBI Holdings purchased a majority stake in Bitpoint, a cryptocurrency exchange. The deal, valued at almost $100 million, would allow SBI to list tokens issued in Gumi-developed games.

The company qualified this development as essential, as most of the tokens issued in these kinds of games are distributed on international exchanges, making it "inconvenient" for domestic users. In the same way, Gumi will issue security tokens backed by these games to customers of SBI.

Gumi also hopes to take advantage of the experience that Square Enix has in developing, distributing, and publishing games in order to push its own blockchain gaming platform, including an NFT marketplace.