Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Avidria]

It's old, but I think most people would say their original intention was clear.

To my mind, it seems more telling that Yoshi-P's specifically referred to such systems as "a thing of the past". To me (and here's a case where I can't really argue with someone who wants to say I'm reading too much into it), that sounds pretty derisive of such a system.

The intention was clear, yes, but he was also referring specifically to a system that (at the time) didn't even exist yet. That article is part of a Q&A from before housing had actually been implemented. At the time, they may indeed have seen it as a thing of the past. But housing in this game was new, and its evident that some people (in this thread, even) actually wanted some sort of house relinquishment system and are glad that it's being implemented even if that implementation isn't ideal. Maybe they didn't want to do it initially, but evidently 2 years of having the current housing system in place and receiving feedback on it has changed that.

Extrapolating from there (and, again, I can't argue with someone who wants to say this is an unreasonable extrapolation), it feels like this isn't a decision that they're being forced to make, rather than finding an alternative solution.

The question (which is far more important in the grand scheme of things than any bickering over housing space) is why a game that's such a huge success, both critically and commercially, isn't getting the appropriate resources to support and take advantage of that success.

This decision seems to be based on player feedback and the things that people were asking for for a while now. This was announced a while back as well, wasn't it? I doubt that this will be the only step they take to try to fix the housing system (at least I hope so, anyway). Heck, this might not even be a permanent implementation, either - they could very well change aspects of it going forward. It hasn't actually been added yet, after all.