Why does Yoshida keep using Covid-19 as an excuse for delays or setbacks?

[Sathona]

Because it did create setbacks.
Pretending it didnt, is dumb.
Not only for Yoshi P but other people too.
Besides covid caused lockdowns, forcing people to work from home, a company would want its contents and whats developed to be secure
so doing all that backened stuff to make sure leaks would be kept to a minimum from their employees etc, caused a big dev time loss.

Also i highly doubt they expected the WoWxodus.
And with the chip shortage getting more servers atm takes longer and is harder.

And its not just Yoshi P/Square Enix..again.
Many people and companies are affected.
Some companies have better preperations for things like this than others.
Considering how much dev time SE lost on FFXIV and FFXVI they probably werent as prepared, cant be helped.

These kinds of threads almost weekly are so unnecessery.
Its an excuse but its a REAL excuse.

[Saefinn]

Before I begin I would like to say he’s a genius for creating final fantasy 14 and I appreciate his work. I’m going to get a lot of hate for this but I don’t care at this point, this is kind of insane…

I have noticed with just about every single delay, setback, or inconvenience, from creative business unit 3 (Yoshida’s group) the excuse is always Covid. I understand it’s serious, but …

Server congestion
World visit queue
World transfer being down for weeks possibly months
Queue wait time kicks
And even the delay of FF16

Naoki Yoshida’s public statement for just about each of these has been “Covid complications”….when employees have the option of working from home, and I assume each employee is vaccinated and wearing a mask. You cannot just use “Covid” as an excuse for everything that goes wrong. Please own up to your mistakes and just say you were not prepared for this and didn’t plan ahead..

It's because it legitimately affects things. As one of those "work from home" people, I have found my productivity is down from being able to work in an office. Changing and adapting to this new environment for them will have had an overall impact, even if that impact was at the start, it can have a rippling effects to deadlines across the board, hence there was a delay in patches in content, in events and release, because you end up making up for lost time, resource and productivity somewhere. This sadly means set backs.

With the more recent issues that you've listed then yes, COVID is a big contributing factor, but is not the only one.
To solve these problems:
- The congestion is because servers are at their upper capacity. This impacts the other issues too (aside from FF16)
- They need more servers
- They intend to add new data centres to house these new servers and spread the population to handle the congestion. To do this, they need a lot of hardware.
- The parts needed to manufacture these servers require semi-conductors
- There is a global semi-conductor shortage
- That shortage was initially caused by trade wars between Japan & South Korea, and USA & China. This started around 2019 (which funnily enough is the last time we had servers added)
- This shortage has been exacerbated by the global COVID pandemic because measures taken to prevent COVID and to protect workers can affect production.
- This shortage affects more than just Square Enix but bigger companies with more clout and also industries who arguably should take a higher priority for supply. It's an industry-wide issue.


It sucks and it does impact things. They're trying to make the best out of a bad situation, which is all we can do too.

[Illmaeran]

I'll add another voice to this as I'm seeing it in my industry as well. COVID, and governmental responses, in addition to specific companies' responses have caused ripple effects. Even if nobody got infected again, we will continue to see shortages and continue to experience logistical challenges for quite a while yet. The global commerce clock has effectively been set back 9-24 months, depending on the industry and is going to take quite a while to get back to normal.

I live in a part of NA where many people refuse to get vaccinated and while we dodged major bullets with the more deadly strains because my company had all non-essential people work from home, we're seeing an increase in people in the office testing positive roughly equal to the regional increase in reported cases.

Seeing how COVID is still circulating around the world and generating increasingly contagious mutations, we can expect to see a continued "Butterfly Effect" for the foreseeable future.

[Haseno]

Because covid is real.

There's 2 big things about server congestion.
The first is that XIV saw a massive increase of players during covid.
The second is the semi-conductor shortage, it already existed before because of crypto, but it's now even worse due to reduced supplies. Demand increased, supply decreased.

FF XVI delay was explained in the letter.

Yes, XIV is far from perfect and has many, many bumps and rough spot.
But covid complication is real and even vaccinated + masks, it slows down everyone. Especially the semi-conductor supply that is not in Yoshida's control.

Covid being real isn't what is causing the setbacks. Government Policy is.

[Lunalepsy]

Before I begin I would like to say he’s a genius for creating final fantasy 14 and I appreciate his work. I’m going to get a lot of hate for this but I don’t care at this point, this is kind of insane…

I have noticed with just about every single delay, setback, or inconvenience, from creative business unit 3 (Yoshida’s group) the excuse is always Covid. I understand it’s serious, but …

Server congestion
World visit queue
World transfer being down for weeks possibly months
Queue wait time kicks
And even the delay of FF16

Naoki Yoshida’s public statement for just about each of these has been “Covid complications”….when employees have the option of working from home, and I assume each employee is vaccinated and wearing a mask. You cannot just use “Covid” as an excuse for everything that goes wrong. Please own up to your mistakes and just say you were not prepared for this and didn’t plan ahead..

Because it is cost-effective.

[TaleraRistain]

He has explained that working from home due to the COVID situation isn't just about vaccinations or masking, it's getting people equipment and making the necessary adjustments for that. A LOT of businesses were not prepared for this setup and had to scramble to put this sort of thing together. Mine had measures in place for some departments, but we definitely had to scramble for those that didn't. And that put some things behind.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Covid being real isn't what is causing the setbacks. Government Policy is.

So it's not COVID, it's government policy......about COVID.

[Jandor]

So it's not COVID, it's government policy......about COVID.

Technically, yes. Whatever your opinion on your Governments response, any and all Governments could theoretically have chosen to do things differently.

[Shibi]

Looks at all the shortages in the supermarket. Empty shelves all over now.
Looks at the full hospitals and people being turned away.
Looks at the items that can't be delivered as there are no drivers left.
Looks at the crops rotting in the ground as there is nobody able to pick them.
Looks at businesses shut because their workforce is in Iso.
Looks at live shows being cancelled when their case turn positive.
Looks at testing lines 8 hours long, and people being turned away.
Looks at thousands of cancelled fights each day.

Really, the problems in a *game* are pretty trivial compared to what else is happening.

[Vahlnir]

Looks at all the shortages in the supermarket. Empty shelves all over now.
Looks at the full hospitals and people being turned away.
Looks at the items that can't be delivered as there are no drivers left.
Looks at the crops rotting in the ground as there is nobody able to pick them.
Looks at businesses shut because their workforce is in Iso.
Looks at live shows being cancelled when their case turn positive.
Looks at testing lines 8 hours long, and people being turned away.
Looks at thousands of cancelled fights each day.

Really, the problems in a *game* are pretty trivial compared to what else is happening.

And just as things were finally starting to look like we had turned a corner...BAM. New variant.