If I live off "pedantic arguments," you seem to live off bashing SE over FFXIV and repeating the same false/dubious/pointless statements over and over.You live off pedantic arguments, you know full well the point being made.
This is provably false, the FFXIV localization team is not just a bunch of translators, they actually work on the lore of the game in tandem with the JP team and report to Yoshi P which means they ARE part of the dev team (and are credited as such in FFXIV's credits)- They've done interviews and discussed this at length multiple times in the past, I'll have to dig it out but I think there's even some info on this in the first edition of the Eorzea Encyclopedia. They work in the same offices and are paid by SE in Japan in local currency. Please stop with your false statements for the umpteenth time. You're operating on some kind of assumption that all localization staff are contractors and that simply isn't true. They are on site staff and it would make no sense whatsoever for SE to compensate them through their NA subsidiary when they are both living and working in Japan. There is no rational justification for that.The people who do the translations from JP to english are paid out of the EU/NA money paid to the EU/NA divisions of Square Enix, they are not part of the core dev teams.
The only reason I'm even reading your posts at this point is because I feel the need to make sure no one reads stuff like this and actually believes it, when it's just not true.