My Crypto Heroes collaborates with major anime studio

Casual blockchain role playing game My Crypto Heroes now has famous cartoon characters from a major Japanese anime studio. Game developer Double Jump partnered with Tezuka Productions. As a result characters like Buddha, Sarutahiko and the legendary Astro Boy have made their way into the blockchain game.

The sale of the Tezuka characters will only last for three weeks. Players will get a thirty percent discount on the new heroes if they bought Plato or Nikola Tesla in a recent sale. All sales will end on January 1st 2020, but the characters can already sell out before that time. There are only one hundred Astro Boy heroes, one hundred Buddha heroes and one thousand Sarutahiko heroes.

Alongside the three new characters, gamers will be able to pick up pets and items in a new game mode called Osamushi. In addition an overpowered robot called Pluto will be the next raid boss in My Crypto Heroes.

Strong on copyright protection

No matter whether people think the collaborating between Double Jump and Tezuka Productions is great or not, one thing stands out. In every mention of the partnership there's a great deal focused on copyright protection. The press release clearly states to 'be aware that copyright of all Tezuka-collaboration's characters belongs to Tezuka Productions'.

Even though gamers own these virtual assets, they can't modify them. Double Jump emphasized this by the following example:

If there is an Art-Edit image that damages the brand and Tezuka Productions asks us to delete that art, we will take action to delete that art.

My Crypto Heroes - Press release

What does this mean? Probably gamers can't use the digital art to make other digital creations. However, if digital assets are true ownership, what stops users from changing them. Well, blockchain technology quite frankly. Even though digital assets are virtual property, there current state is determined by the blockchain. Any change would create a new asset, which would therefore not be the same as the original - potentially valuable - asset.

Yet, My Crypto Heroes has a special menu called 'art'. Here players can share their creations using assets from My Crypto Heroes. It's likely that some creations using Astro Boy or other Tezuka Productions characters will be deleted by Double Jump.

Japan getting bigger on blockchain games

Both Double Jump and Tezuka Productions are from Japan. These two companies are not alone with their fascination for digital collectibles on the blockchain. At the beginning of this year major games publisher Square Enix, known for Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, already showed interest. Last week Double Jump made a deal with game publisher Gumi to use the Brave Frontier license for a new, upcoming blockchain game.

It's not weird to see digital collectibles becoming popular in Japan. Japanese people tend to like anime, manga, and J-pop music, while they are very well accustomed to playing video games on mobile devices. Digital services are part of Japanese culture, and the country's biggest railroad company is planning to accept cryptocurrency payments.