What Portion of Cash-Shop Proceeds go toward Development

Yes, because the only product that SE makes is FFXIV. The most-likely assumption would be that any increase in revenue would go toward future R&D for not only this game, but for every project they have at the company. It's a bit ridiculous to demand a company to share budgeting plans with the general (in this case, non-understanding) public.

People just wanna know if their cash will benefit the game in any way rather than detract from it.

It would be nice to be reassured.

Though sadly I think the answer is it'll most likely hinder FFXIV development.

never mind.

I would give them a gold mine of cash if it meant major patches came every two months instead of three.

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Originally Posted by Parz3val

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SE as a public company had been bleeding $$ for quite some time. I think its kinda funny when ppl are concerned about "padding wallets". Their wallets had giant holes in them. At this point its more realistic to say that they are trying to stop the bleeding. I don't begrudge them that. You'd do the same if your wallet had holes in it.

I'd rather know what portion of our subscription is being used to develop content that gets locked behind a cash shop instead of being released in a patch or expansion.

Do we even know what portion of the initial game purchase and monthly subscriptions go toward development? Obviously it isn't 100%. The devs don't get to keep all the money to pay themselves with, then decide where to allocate the rest of the funds. The money goes to Square Enix, who makes all kinds of products. It is reasonable that the company will attribute a higher budget to a game that is performing better than others, but it's not like it's a 1:1 ratio of "you make x amount of money, you get that money put back into the game." SE rakes in the revenue FFXIV gets, uses it to pay for business expenses, funding other projects, employee salaries, etc. And whatever is left over, they divide up where they see fit and decide on a budget for each game. And even at that point, the budget is not purely a "Make the Game Awesome Fund" -- a huge portion goes into marketing, merchandise, hiring staff, server maintenance, and other stuff.

I don't think we will ever get any stats about how much of the game's profit goes back into actual "game development," because not only is that a vague term, but the percentage probably fluctuates constantly based on the company's whims.

All I know is, Square Enix took in our subscription money and decided to use it to create the cash shop. I'm not confident that the cash shop profits will be used any differently.