[Rant] Square's recent IP sales to invest in blockchain have me worried.

[Theodric]

Yeah, their mobile games are terrible in this regard. I haven't been able to get past the main menu of any of the mobile games I've tried that they've put out. They give you some freebies which aren't even that impressive, but then you have to give your soul for anything else.

If they're willing to do it in one part of the company then they're really just waiting for the right excuse to implement it elsewhere. There isn't nearly the same amount of aversion to NFT's or microtransactions over there as there is here...and even then, a lot of of people here end up begrudgingly accepting their presence in one form or another because otherwise they'd have to avoid the vast majority of games altogether.

I suspect a lot of these companies are waiting for one of their rivals to make the first bold move, maybe in the form of overextending. Then the others will swoop in with something less jarring and a lot of gamers will reason that at least it isn't as bad as the first time...only for many games to suddenly end up implemented NFT's in some form. Exactly like how microtransactions creeped in almost everywhere.

[Vahlnir]

If they're willing to do it in one part of the company then they're really just waiting for the right excuse to implement it elsewhere. There isn't nearly the same amount of aversion to NFT's or microtransactions over there as there is here...and even then, a lot of of people here end up begrudgingly accepting their presence in one form or another because otherwise they'd have to avoid the vast majority of games altogether.

I suspect a lot of these companies are waiting for one of their rivals to make the first bold move, maybe in the form of overextending. Then the others will swoop in with something less jarring and a lot of gamers will reason that at least it isn't as bad as the first time...only for many games to suddenly end up implemented NFT's in some form. Exactly like how microtransactions creeped in almost everywhere.

Yeah, this is certainly possible. Hopefully this isn't how it actually goes down, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it does end up being the case.

[Seraphor]

NFTs just seem like a phenomenally bad idea, and I can't understand why they're being pushed so much when they're only worth what everyone believes they are worth... except that perfectly explains why they're being pushed so much. If people stop being interested in NFT's, they become worthless, and all that investment is for nothing.
Who the hell benefits in the end with NFT's? You buy some, you don't get anything out of it until you resell it, presumably for a profit, but that requires someone else wanting to pay more for it than you did.
It's like gambling on stocks, except those stocks are purely imaginary with no real life value.

Then you have the energy cost attached to them on top.

[Dzian]

Alot of it is not knowing there audience anymore. the reboot trilogy of tomb raider has shipped nearly 40 million copies across the 3 games. pretty successful series really. not really a mainstream franchise either so it's definitely done well with regards to its core audience.

the problem is people hyer inflate targets. and expect 100 million sales or the games a flop.. and want everything they push out to be super mainstream successful but often in chansing that they butcher everything that made the games so well liked in the first place..

its the reason so many franchises have vanaished over the years, not just SE but so many other developers. they oversimplicify and shallow out games to try and make them appeal to more players and they end up killing the franchise entirely because they destroy everything players loved that made the games great.

[DPZ2]

Yeah, this. It's entirely possible that SE will experiment with NFTs and gauge reception before applying it to FFXIV.

That ship has sailed, traded cargo and come back already. NFTs in mobile games were tested back in 2020/2021. Go read their financial reports.

This game (FFXIV) does not have any reasonable means to incorporate NFTs, the Producer does not want them, and the company makes enough money on this IP to make it likely we'll never see something like that applied to the game.

Nothing in the sales announcement implies they intend to inject the funds solely in blockchain technologies. For one thing, that would be overkill and an expensive way of throwing away money. Blockchain isn't that costly to implement.

On another note: I expect that the company decided that losing money or not making much of a margin on games from Western development companies was sufficient reason to take the loss in revenue and apply the funds from the sales to some other projects. For one thing, the translation problems of a non-Japanese-speaking development company interacting with Corporate, who are Japanese speaking, was probably getting to be a bit much for SE.

[AkaeiNox]

I wonder if they are preparing themselves to be acquired by Sony?
Maybe Sony just didn't want to deal with European and Canadian regulations for acquisitions so they asked Squeenix to sell their non-japanese IPs?

Sony Entertainment is massive so they would have to be careful to not trigger anti-trust laws, if the scope of the acquisition is contained to Japan they wouldn't have to worry too much about that.

[Raoabolic]

I wonder if they are preparing themselves to be acquired by Sony?
Maybe Sony just didn't want to deal with European and Canadian regulations for acquisitions so they asked Squeenix to sell their non-japanese IPs?

Sony Entertainment is massive so they would have to be careful to not trigger anti-trust laws, if the scope of the acquisition is contained to Japan they wouldn't have to deal with that.

NGL, if SE gets absorbed by Sony then I'm quitting the game cold turkey. Sony actively kneecaps games that are remotely Japanese. Sony policies combined with SE's ethics department sounds like a nightmare for XIV and the future of SE titles in general.

[angienessyo]

I think the reasoning for the sale is pretty dumb, but I also wasn't surprised. Square doesn't really know what to do with its western devs so it's not shocking they sold them.

[Valfreyja]

I look at it like this. At least now maybe we'll get a decent Legacy of Kain reboot/remaster/remake instead of it sitting and doing nothing.

[EagleDynamics]

Not too specific to XIV, but I'm a big fan of a lot of Squares IPs including those that were recently sold off. I am very worried about the direction the companies taking regarding blockchain.

When you're selling classic IPs like Tomb Raider in order to invest harder in NFTs... That doesn't exactly scream that your priority is the gaming audience. It says priority is making as much money from speculation on digital assets as possible from a technology that is rampant in scams and hasn't had a single proven successful gaming project behind it.

And although there have been assurances that there are no plans to push NFTs towards XIV at this point, I do worry that over longer periods of time it will transition towards it given outside pressure. (e.g. Some form of Square NFT wallet to unlock extra non-NFT items like emotes or glams)

I dont mean to fearmonger or rant. I dont think this is the end of Square or XIV or anything and I do think Yoshi P is genuine when he says there are no plans at this time to integrate blockchain with XIV...

I just dont want to see the company becoming a factory for games that are creatively bankrupt, exploitative, and ultimately unsuccessful (like the fiasco with Marvel Avengers, and more recently Chocobo Racing which would have been fantastic without the scam-like monetisation).

You can be profitable and creative. You've been doing it for years.

Anyway rant over, sorry if this feels too similar to threads made after the investor message regarding NFTs. I just felt it was worth saying given the IP sales for the purpose of NFTs.

i hope its not headed in the direction of nfts. i remember yoshi p said no a while ago but who knows. that could change.