Square Enix and Crypto

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Originally Posted by Conundrum

OK...


https://i.etsystatic.com/16502126/c/...42906_t3s3.jpg

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Now THIS is Podracing.

And important thing to remember is that the FFXIV devs are NOT the same as the SE CEO and the Corporate side of the industry. This scummy thing is coming from the corporate publisher SE, not the XIV dev team.

I can't in any reality see YoshiP and the team being okay with adding NFT's to XIV. If it happens and gets forced on them by corporate side, the community would mass riot and exodus. At least, I would hope these devs would fight against that.

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Originally Posted by ArkenaeuxBelmont

And important thing to remember is that the FFXIV devs are NOT the same as the SE CEO and the Corporate side of the industry. This scummy thing is coming from the corporate publisher SE, not the XIV dev team.

I can't in any reality see YoshiP and the team being okay with adding NFT's to XIV. If it happens and gets forced on them by corporate side, the community would mass riot and exodus. At least, I would hope these devs would fight against that.

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The problem is that sometimes corporate meddling from higher places oozes all the way down to other departments. Imagine if the SE CEO decided to tell YoshiP to add NFTs to FFXIV in one way or another because "It's the future of gaming".
This garbage is going to get worse before it gets better, and by getting better I mean it will die in a most spectacular way.

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Originally Posted by rance-sama

The problem is that sometimes corporate meddling from higher places oozes all the way down to other departments. Imagine if the SE CEO decided to tell YoshiP to add NFTs to FFXIV in one way or another because "It's the future of gaming".
This garbage is going to get worse before it gets better, and by getting better I mean it will die in a most spectacular way.

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Oh I 100% agree, hence when I said I really hope that doesn't happen.

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Originally Posted by Ezzeloharr

I know this. Rampant fraud, theft, Ponzi schemes, and the like, are other problems endemic to crypto in general. The evidence is overwhelming. However, there's no reason to believe that, just because SE would be involved, things would be any different for a crypto scheme operated by SE. Users would still have their wallets stolen, exposed to fraudulent side projects masquerading as relating to SE, and the like. This problem is intrinsic to crypto, and thus completely unavoidable. How is the consumer well served by the addition of crypto to gaming, then?

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actually i totally agree with you on all that.

When are people going to realize that Corps aren't for you. They are to make money and if a iffy, predatory way to make a good amount of money come about that they all will jump on it.

Ubisoft opened the door, now everyone will walk through it.

We have a perfect example here already. Do you actually think Yoshi P wanted to add the Cruise Chaser to the FFXIV Cash Shop?

https://c.tenor.com/puvU5YS9r4cAAAAM...duck-money.gif

Given SEs history with how they treat the industry, it's not surprising, SE likes to be ahead of the curve, and has always been willing to do it in a sleazy way. It was like that when JRPGs got big, and it' still like that now.

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Originally Posted by Bobby66

Crypto is cool, it is just a new gold rush, why hate on it so much? Leave my profits alone! I was able to pay back my student loans in 3 years with crypto.

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If you want to invest your money in speculative assets to resell to other speculators (or someone who needs to pay off a ransomware gang or international heroin smugglers), have at it.

NFTs are a laughably ridiculous scam that we do not want in our games. They add no value to games. Period. Game companies clearly see NFTs as the next big way to separate players from their money. SE is not the only company doing this (or talking about doing it), and it is imperative that all gamers everywhere make clear that we will not tolerate it.

It is not exactly clear what FFXIV NFTs would look like, and much of Matsuda's letter was a borderline-meaningless word salad of techbro idiotspeak ("Leveraging cloud technologies is extremely effective... as a catalyst for creating new forms of excitement that expand upon the content development capabilities for which we are known."). Maybe the ownership history of every plot of land could be recorded on the blockchain for no one to ever go look at. Maybe they would layer a "token economy" over the regular gil economy like WoW did. But, you know, with blockchain. For some reason. The point is that there's no good answer to the question. Whatever SE's "blockchain gaming" might look like, it is axiomatically worse than what we have already.

Keep working on the language recognition and AI modeling stuff. That's great. Try out cloud-based gaming. Sure. Whatever. But keep this NFT/blockchain trash away from our games.

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And important thing to remember is that the FFXIV devs are NOT the same as the SE CEO and the Corporate side of the industry. This scummy thing is coming from the corporate publisher SE, not the XIV dev team.

I can't in any reality see YoshiP and the team being okay with adding NFT's to XIV. If it happens and gets forced on them by corporate side, the community would mass riot and exodus. At least, I would hope these devs would fight against that.

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This. I've always known the Square CEO and big wigs are scummy. I support FF14 because of yoshi-p and his team are at the helm. The moment yoshi-P and his team are gone is the moment FF14 will start going downhill and becoming the greedy cesspool that other MMOs have become.

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Originally Posted by Kyu-Momo

This. I've always known the Square CEO and big wigs are scummy. I support FF14 because of yoshi-p and his team are at the helm. The moment yoshi-P and his team are gone is the moment FF14 will start going downhill and becoming the greedy cesspool that other MMOs have become.

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Well he’s already been putting his time towards 16 and i think it’s beginning to show with the gear and content…

OMG. NFTs in video games. Whatever should we do?

Should have thought about that when Blizzard started putting WoW Tokens up for sale, or Fortnite started selling V-Bucks, or < insert name of gaming company that has in-game currency that you can also purchase with Real Money>.

Also, may I point out slides 23-25 here: https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/i...22q2slides.pdf

(Note, this is the briefing session dated 5 November 2021)

SE's vision of NFTs is more like Wizard of the Coasts releasing yet another expansion full of playing cards.

Block-chain technologies do not have to involve every computer with a GPU in the world 'mining' for < insert favorite cryptojunk currency >.

Speculation in NFTs is the equivalent of investing in Beanie Babies. I have a bag of Beanie Babies in the closet from when my son was young. Did they go up in price? Sure did, for a couple of years, and then ... boom, er, bust. They are worth more as just toys as far as my son was concerned, so that 'investment' wasn't too bad.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

Crypto is a blight on the environment, at a time the world can't afford that damage.

It needs to be shunned, not embraced.

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AGREED!
This is the first time since I start playing where I'm really disappointed in Square Enix. Crypto needs to go.

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Originally Posted by Maxilor

I remember someone saying a quote once that went along the lines of this:

"If you truly wanted to live your life without using any product that was harmful to the environment in some way, you would be butt naked in a gutter drinking rain water."

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There's a difference between buying a new cellphone and helping sustain a form of currency for which one form alone consumes nearly 100TW per hour.
Just because you're cornered here and there into having an environmental footprint, doesn't mean that anything is good to go.

So uhh I have a digital certificate that attests that I own a small band of about 3 arc-seconds around Alpha Centauri B's northern equatorial region.
Anybody interested in a resort of blazing hot gases?

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...7PXwAk_OZm.png

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Originally Posted by Thaciscokidd

Ubisoft opened the door, now everyone will walk through it.

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ubisoft opened the door and was promptly kicked back inside by massive backlash (and no one buying their stupid tokens)

If they implement something like this, i hope a lot of people will cancel the sub and will not comeback into the game. I will. We do not need another Blizzard on our hands.

Scam to take money off from people with smaller brains.

I'm against NFT's, it's just plain stupid.
Vid related to topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeNTyuuOc6o

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Originally Posted by andrealfus

ubisoft opened the door and was promptly kicked back inside by massive backlash (and no one buying their stupid tokens)

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True, but DLC started with horse armor that no one like and look at what we got today. Just cause one failed doesn't mean that everyone is going to just give up, you just need a better coat of paint.

Besides Final Fantasy, Sqenix has a lot of well loved franchises with ultra fans. It might not be a monkey pic, for example if they put out in this game a Limited Edition Sephiroth Glamour that you could sell just on the market board, you know that there's going to be a big market for it.

They already do gacha which is iffy in its own right and like DPZ2 pointed out they have discussed it in there shareholders briefings. Its not of a if its gonna happen its more of a when they find a form that is more acceptable.

I'll be watching the situation closely and evaluating whether I continue to do business with Square-Enix based on how it unfolds. To be clear, going forward with NFTs and blockchain shit will mean Square and my custom part ways.

Surprised that nobody has linked the Asmongold video on the topic yet. Anyways I hope this entire thing fizzles out before it has a chance to infect ALL the online games that I play. And if it does then oh well, I still have my neverwinter nights, civilizations, anno, homm, age of and many other old games that I can play until covid ends us all.

i mean... they lost nothing over this, the put some nft stuff and if people took it, they take it further. if not, they just going to cancel it and either see how it will go or maybe jut put whatever nft stuff they have before to "normal" shop.

this is literally bait and switch

Nft make loot box look alright, please SE, Don't do it.

I've left Eve Online when they started to pull shady shit back in the day. I don't want to leave another MMO because of stuff like this.
NFT suck and doesn't give anything to customer. It's just steam market place with extra step and environmental cost.

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Originally Posted by gumas

i mean... they lost nothing over this, the put some nft stuff and if people took it, they take it further. if not, they just going to cancel it and either see how it will go or maybe jut put whatever nft stuff they have before to "normal" shop.

this is literally bait and switch

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People have said that about so many things I don't even care to count anymore. It's never that, it's like a vacuum seller that puts his foot in the way of you closing the door, sure he's not sold you the vacuum yet and he's not entered your home yet, but you can be sure as all Heck that he's still on the same goal.

It just take one of these things making its way into the shop and before you know it, they'll add another, and then another. With every subsequent additions, people will grow tired about complaining about something they clearly have no input over, and eventually it'll sell.

I cannot fathom how someone working in an entertainment industry can be so detached from their own customers.

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I realize that some people who “play to have fun” and who currently form the majority of players have voiced their reservations toward these new trends, and understandably so. However, I believe that there will be a certain number of people whose motivation is to “play to contribute,” by which I mean to help make the game more exciting. Traditional gaming has offered no explicit incentive to this latter group of people, who were motivated strictly by such inconsistent personal feelings as goodwill and volunteer spirit.

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Really now? We play games to relax, to have fun. Only a small group of people, people that try to use a trend to make money, is interested in anything NFT, pretty much everyone else considers them a scam. And that is because fundamentally, the current NFT boon is a scam.

Edit - its not "some people" who play to have fun, its "almost all of the people", as in, the very, clear, majority of your customers.

I wasn't aware the CEO of Square Enix was actually Lolorito.

Consumer good will is a one time currency. Once it's gone, it's near impossible to get back. It took Yoshi-P 8+ years to fix the image of FF14 after 1.0 and it was through hard work, determination, and putting the customer first that they managed to salvage the brand. Yet here comes the CEO, already a figure who isn't well liked in the community, willing to throw all of that down the toilet for a naked money laundering scheme that's liable to implode the second any regulation is put in place. And all in the name of the unsustainable monetary growth that epitomizes the capitalist business model. Hilariously it's almost as if SE is most well known for making a beloved game franchise that directly critiques corporate greed and the environmental effects it can have... Guess the CEO didn't get the memo.

If this goes through and touches FF14 in any way this "casual" gamer will not be continuing my sub or purchasing another SE backed product. The fact that Endwalker finished the story I cared so much about will allow me to leave with little to no regrets.

Shit sucks, hope the project crashes and burns.

This doesn't sound good, but I don't see this type of thing coming to FFXIV. Square Enix is a huge company that produces and publishes a lot of things. I think they would more likely implement this into a new game that is centered around that concept, although there's a high likelihood it would be a Final Fantasy-branded product. But I mean, there a bunch of shabby-looking FF mobile games that I don't touch, it doesn't bother me any or impact FFXIV at all.

As a side note, what the heck is he talking about how 2021 is the "Metaverse" year, because Facebook officially changed to "Meta"? I'm on Facebook right now, there's nothing different about it and no mention of "Meta" anything.

They gotta recuperate those inflated costs they are paying for new servers somehow.

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Originally Posted by Fyrebrand

This doesn't sound good, but I don't see this type of thing coming to FFXIV. Square Enix is a huge company that produces and publishes a lot of things. I think they would more likely implement this into a new game that is centered around that concept, although there's a high likelihood it would be a Final Fantasy-branded product. But I mean, there a bunch of shabby-looking FF mobile games that I don't touch, it doesn't bother me any or impact FFXIV at all.

As a side note, what the heck is he talking about how 2021 is the "Metaverse" year, because Facebook officially changed to "Meta"? I'm on Facebook right now, there's nothing different about it and no mention of "Meta" anything.

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Facebook is planning on releasing something called the "Metaverse". Basically imagine VRchat and Second Life had a baby, the graphics look like something straight out of 2003, and a bunch of tech illiterate rich people seem to think it's this great innovation but almost everything about it has been iterated upon for years at this point. Like weddings, for example.

My biggest questions on this is for Square would be if the stuff gets added into FFXIV, how will it affect gameplay and the in-game economy.

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Originally Posted by Fyrebrand

This doesn't sound good, but I don't see this type of thing coming to FFXIV.

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Square-Enix still owns FF, doesn't that mean that XIV is tied entirely to lining S-E's pockets and supporting company decisions like this?

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Originally Posted by Puksi

Square-Enix still owns FF, doesn't that mean that XIV is tied entirely to lining S-E's pockets and supporting company decisions like this?

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Yoshi-P has full control over FFXIV, so it's very unlikely NFTs will come

what did bother me more than nft... is hearing from the president of a company that develop and edit videogame this:
"i realize that some people who "play to have fun" and who currently form the majority of players have voiced their reservations toward these new trends, and understandbly so. however, i believe that there will be a certain number of people whose motivation is to "play to contribute" by which i means help make the game more excitling"

i know SE is making money, that something we can't ignore... but where we need nft for help to contribute? every player of FF14 contribute to help the game to become better... by paying subs. a lot help more do contribute by renting more servant and some even contribute more by purchasing stuff on the mogs station (i'm part of the last group when i see something i want).

worse, since when player alias customers, need to work for help the company to create stuff to sell. is not our task... our task is purchasing a good for enjoying it... that the goal of every customer of FF14.... not the majority... i don't see anyone paying a subs to a game for not having fun... anyone spending money on a videogame is for "play to have fun".

i will be blunt, i found this letter insulting to every customer of SE, not only FF14. the president did try to sell us something we never ask for and try to force us to purchase it by wanting to add it to them IP. worst the president was looking down (almost being rude) by saying what he have said... he seems to know more about us than ourself. he seems to know what we want? he seems to know what is good for us... don't it remember you someone else? a certain developper of another mmorpg that did come saying "you don't know what you want"

the simple fact to place in quote "play to have fun" feel like we are degenerate that are not with the trends... and are polluting the game. while not contributing to the game.... when every player of this community is already doing... we are playing to have fun and contributing to make the game better... by paying subs, purchasing optional stuff and even coming to this forum to share our thought and experience for improve the game.

honestly, i feel this letter was worst than the launch of the V1. because not enough to redo the same error of the past... they are looking down on us, insulting our intelligence and passion for this game...

we don't need nft, we don't need something that have nothing to bring to our game... exept make us pay more. and more important we need apologies for this "letter".

i will finish by this... most trend are not great, and honestly until a month at best i didn't even care for this sort of stupidity.

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Originally Posted by technole

They gotta recuperate those inflated costs they are paying for new servers somehow.

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you know that ff14 did create tons of benefit, they don't need this for pay for the new server... they need to stop spending cash stupidly... or have bad commercial decision. example: exclusive launch on EGS, have a part of the content exclusive to some plateform (yes i talk of the debacle of marvel avenger). they need to stop to look at short term gain...

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

My biggest questions on this is for Square would be if the stuff gets added into FFXIV, how will it affect gameplay and the in-game economy.

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NFT trading of Sparkle-Ponies, housing plots, and maybe raid weapons - with all the associated RMT.

Imagine a limited edition Meister statue of Lyse that comes with a NFT Raubahn mount code. That mount can be traded - this is the raison d'être of NFTs after all - how can RMT not be involved if someone wants that code?

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Originally Posted by Enla

Facebook is planning on releasing something called the "Metaverse". Basically imagine VRchat and Second Life had a baby, the graphics look like something straight out of 2003, and a bunch of tech illiterate rich people seem to think it's this great innovation but almost everything about it has been iterated upon for years at this point. Like weddings, for example.

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Am not really warm for metaverse, there are some online worlds that have done things better. Also not warm for Second Life much only visited that to view a friends creation but it doesn’t attract me otherwise. I do go on VRchat a slight bit more because while some creations are a bit meh, some are real artworks to explore + while some game devs maybe hate it I do like seeing some places from video games I love back on there too. Am a bit shy so my privacy settings are friends only 98% of the times.
I also liked Playstation home kind of, some stuff was a bit … weird (don’t make a girl avatar because the lonely fanboys will flood you) but I really liked some of the minigames they offered and some things were put together pretty nicely, too bad that it never lived up to the initial plans they had for it. For the minigames… while it has a bit of an other feel to it, I have visited Tower Unite for that too.
FFXIV is obviously a fine online world too I visit it the most of all I have ever visited probably. The mini games are great as well if I need some of that.

Now metaverse possibly may end up with some fun minigames, sure why not if they can build it in and so on. One thing on my mind is how facebook hates nicknames so idk how they do with privacy settings. In this day and age next to personal irl contacts we also have warm contacts with many people online, people you maybe like to share some life related things but not all too personal details. So idk what to really expect there and all…

"Contribute", lol. I'll always find it funny how finance-speak spins everything into honeyed words. Contributing to what? Funding games? Salaries? The next pinstripe suit?