Quote Originally Posted by Lycieus View Post
So I've had cash shop defenders tell me that I have no idea how the funds for these were allocated. This is why my original post included a statement about resources, and the fact that people making assets for the cash shop would need to be trained on XIV systems, requiring time etc. This is not refutable.

The point regarding money on the other hand... is a double-edged sword. You can't claim that the investments were within the xiv budget and not outside of it, just as I can't claim the opposite. You don't know if they would have been financed otherwise.
Yes I can because I understand how accounting works (its what I am trained at) and since corporations tend to try and keep accounting standards uniform (due to regulation and reporting across countries) the hints given give a pretty strong hints on how SE structures in revenue streams.

Even then IF, and this is a big IF, they did have the cash shop times created from FF14's budget then that budget would have been allocated taking into consideration earnings from the cash shop meaning that without the cash shops earnings FF14's budget would have been reduced as the cost of developing cash shop items would have increased the amount of funds allocated to the game.

Simply put your sub isn't paying for those items. If your not buying them off the cash shop you haven't paid for them.