Square Enix has ripped off the mask to show just how cynical, just how exploitative, just how greedy the game industry is. As it embraces the Metaverse, the Blockchain, and NFTs, it promises a truly horrible future for gaming.
This is the culmination of everything the “AAA” industry has been working towards. The turning of digital goods into a mass market where the customer gets literally nothing in return for everything. Where gaming itself becomes a job, where the virtual world is just as corporatized and monetized as the real one.
Thank you, Square Enix, for nakedly admitting just how disgusting you are.
Got to give it to them, they are making it easier for me decide to avoid their future releases.
That letter was so full of vapid corporate buzzspeak, vain technobabble, and cartoonish villainy I initially couldn’t tell if it was legit, or a working script for a Simpson’s sketch.
I genuinely hope the phrase “NFTs: Year One” becomes a joke that we refer back to, and not the harbinger of the worst change in gaming monetisation. I was worried this would be a bit too near filming for a Jimquisition, glad I was wrong. Thank you for covering it Steph. Hell of a crappy start to 2022.
I go on reddit every now and then, I go there to talk about games and gaming.
Lately, I’ve been complaining (surprise, I know) about the predatory, and abusive state of AAA gaming.
I’ve been highlighting the decline in quality and content and the increase in price.
Among the younger people the sentiment was the same: that was then, this is now. Be happy with it or stop playing…
It’s over, the Publishers have won. They’ve stockholmed a whole generation or gamers who are either so enthralled with the flashy images on their screens, or too apathetic to demand basic Human fucking decency from these heartless, monstrous companies.
The Publishers are acting out in the open now because they know they’re bullet proof, and they’ll keep pushing and taking and abusing, because they can.
Can a letter fail the Turing test? I feel like this ceo has just outed themselves as not actually human.
Hope y’all enjoy the thumbtacks at the end lol!
You know when I first heard of NFTs I was confused on what they exactly were, heard some explanations and got even more confused.
Then I watched one of your videos on them and I finally understood what exactly they were.
Turns out I actually knew what they were all along, its just that they were so stupid I thought I was understanding it wrong.
“Gaming for fun” is now being scoffed at. We’re well and truly fucked.
This is especially disgusting considering the developers of FFXIV, probably the best and most popular game SE have right now, have explicitly said multiple times that the components they need to make new servers to keep up with all the nee players are super hard to get a hold of because crypto farmers keep buying them all.
Honestly the FFXIV team is probably the only part of SE that isn’t filled with horrible people.
“There haven’t been as many major game changing content that were used generated as one would expect”
That is why people have rebuilt entire games. Created operating systems to let you play games corporations won’t sell you. Overhauled almost every game in existence. Released more content than any major studio will even dream of.
The only thing thats slowed the pace of people creating mods, ports and user content is that corporations started suing mod makers or pressing criminal charges against emulator developers
Just what people need. A second job for people to grind at until they have a breakdown. These companies can burn.
I’ve seen so many discussions on twitter about NFT’s in games, about bringing NFT’s into different games, decentralization, play to earn, and whether they will be positive things (spoiler: they won’t). But publishers aren’t even having that discussion. To them it’s as simple as seeing others leverage IP to make money. They have IP, they want money, there you go.
The creation of mini stock markets in triple-A games has been growing ever since pre-order culture took root. When a game goes on pre-sale, it’s effectively floating its futures on the market. Keep releasing flashy – often arbitrary – trailers and stick to that release date no matter what to keep those pre-orders and the “stock” high, but the moment a publisher does something creatively prudent like letting the devs get on with actually making the game rather than E3 presentations or delay the release to maybe test the damn thing, then pre-orders get ignored or cancelled and the stock goes down. It was inevitable that things like season passes, loot boxes, and NFTs – essentially this idea of a perceived future but non-tangible value – would follow.
It is fascinating how one can claim to be sad/concerned that there has not been enough creativity and change wrought by Users while Mods have always been forced to tread lightly to not call down the wrath of Publishers. Lets put in NFT BS so its slowly getting impossible to Mod anything
the utter insult to injury is the fact that square’s most profitable game, final fantasy XIV, selling SO WELL THEY HAD TO STOP SELLING IT, is experiencing that trouble quite specifically and exclusively BECAUSE of crypto miners inflating the microchip shortage.
This is why you can’t be quiet about this stuff even if it seems repetitive because every inch we give they take 100 miles and run with it until they hit a PR backlash and we pay for it versus them. Games aren’t complete when released, everything is monetized, and not only do these companies not care about their customers they don’t even care about their own staff (Sexual Harassment, Race discrimination, you name it).
And what becomes of these “virtual goods” when the games they are attached to are inevitably abandoned by their publishers for the “next big thing”? Will they be carried over to a sequel? Of _course_ not. What you bought will become virtual waste, with its value effectively zeroed. It’s the next level of scam- not only getting you to pay for nothing, but to _re-buy it next year._