Square Enix now threatens to send players to jail for criticizing their employees

[VictorSpoils]

This person clearly should not have been hired and it reflects poorly on Yoshida and the game as a whole.

[BunnyBrat]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/squa...ant-be-normal/

L O L

Did you read the article you posted? It's for harassment, not criticism. It also addresses stalking and doxxing. And good. Lock those psychos up.

[Akonyl]

"You can't criticize employees anymore!!!"

- The article is talking about employees receiving death threats and harassment

If you think this is about "criticism", or that SE would in any way shape or form have the power to send you to jail just over "criticism", I think you need to take a step back from the game and re-evaluate how you interact with people.

[NamiRocket]

I would agree with you were it not for the behavior of certain employees who exaggerate the criticisms they get or who insinuate that people disliking a particular soundtrack or story beat are racist.

"I have different opinions about a video game than one of its voice actors, so I should be allowed to send them death threats," isn't the big-brained take you think it is. It only shows how deeply out-of-touch and overly sensitive you are. Get thicker skin.

Sena's also trans so there's fuel to the fire. There's just loads of evidence to suggest people whoa re upset with her performance are trying to go after her, and not a lot of reason for her, or the company she works for to lie about it.

The fact that the person you're replying to went to great lengths to avoid pronouns of any kind means they probably already know this fact very well.

[Merrigan]

I never said that, but if Twitter is the issue, stop using Twitter. I'm not invalidating the crazy stuff these psychos are saying. All I'm saying is take charge of your own shit. Be an adult.

Video gamers are weirdos. Japan as a country has stalker and harassment issues. Hell, their phones don't have the ability to shut off their shutter sounds on their cameras because of all the creepy weirdos.

I just think all of it is stupid. Especially arguing fair treatment, etc, with devices made from slave labor from a colbalt mine in a building with suicide nets. But let's debate right and wrong!

It's all stupid.

You're going off on a bit of a tangent - particularly with regard to the way devices are made. I don't see the link. Especially as we're talking on a forum.

As far as we're concerned, if it's not on twitter, it'll be on another social network. It won't make any difference to change your social network, not if the person in front of you is determined enough to piss you off. Hence what I said above: saying that all you have to do is “be an adult” and “change your network” is like asking the person to pee in a violin. It's pointless, it only shifts the problem (which, in this case, is the disempowerment of the individual act when it's confronted with a collective movement and takes place on virtual spaces), and above all, I insist: it can make things worse.

[Drimn]

"You can't criticize employees anymore!!!"

- The article is talking about employees receiving death threats and harassment

If you think this is about "criticism", or that SE would in any way shape or form have the power to send you to jail just over "criticism", I think you need to take a step back from the game and re-evaluate how you interact with people.

Considering we're talking about a company whose response to a fall from grace is to mimic a toxic 2010s Western development studio, yes, it is about criticism, since the kind of toxic developers we're talking about take any response other than gleefully facediving into whatever slop they present us and giving thunderous applause as harassment. None of this would be a big deal to anyone if it wasn't for the behavior of a few of SE's employees post-DT release, Yoshi-P included. We've seen how dev teams that behave like they have been interpret what's harassment and what isn't, and their definition is very broad.

[Zelda206]

It's going to be a hell of a year for Square, either way!

[Merrigan]

Considering we're talking about a company whose response to a fall from grace is to mimic a toxic 2010s Western development studio, yes, it is about criticism, since the kind of toxic developers we're talking about take any response other than gleefully facediving into whatever slop they present us and giving thunderous applause as harassment. None of this would be a big deal to anyone if it wasn't for the behavior of a few of SE's employees post-DT release, Yoshi-P included. We've seen how dev teams that behave like they have been interpret what's harassment and what isn't, and their definition is very broad.

Very unpopular opinion on this forum: even if it were indeed a matter of criticism (which it isn't, given the article posted), then the ultra-negativity present on this platform almost justifies the response. It's not a round of applause that's being asked for: it's just, perhaps, something other than a constant cascade of more or less politely worded complaints.

Is the company trying out a new format (chaotic raid)? It's not going to work, the content is too hard, not enough, not tenable in the long term. New forms of quest? No, not like that! I don't like the old format, but I don't want the new one either! (cf : The Endwalker quests, which have been terribly badly received). A zone like Bozja? If it's released too soon, people will complain about the monotony of this content. Too late? That's a sign of studio disorganisation. Improved graphics? Characters are no longer recognisable, heresy! Not improved? ‘Say, it's about time you took another look at the performance of your SE graphics engine!’ So yes, each of these complaints is not made by the same person... But when you're on the other side of the fence, you don't remember the pseudonym. You don't know whether it's Merrigan complaining about the healers, or Drimm moaning about the standardisation of classes. What you do know is that people have complained about the standardisation of classes and healers, and Merrigan and Drimm have merged into a single entity called the ‘community’. And this entity is NEVER satisfied. NEVER.

There's a world of difference between asking for acknowledgement that there's a modicum of work behind this game (which there is) and asking for unbridled adoration. Yet the forum as a whole barely acknowledges the former most of the time. You add to that an incredible general lack of understanding of how this type of studio works (which can sometimes lead to outlandish requests) and you certainly get an impression that must be that of a teacher facing a bunch of ungrateful, bawling kids.

[Drimn]

3000 char limit

I don't think you'll find many people here that don't understand what hard work it is making a game. The closest I've done when it comes to game dev is making some "lights out" game with 25 buttons in Visual Basic when I was younger. It is incredibly hard work. But it's hard work that we pay $15+ a month and $60+ an expac for. They provide a service, we provide patronization for said service. That's how client-business relationships work. And it's not our business or our problem how the studio functions behind the scenes, but it is our problem when something we're loyal to, that we've invested many hours and lots of money into patronizing isn't up to the standards we expect, that they've set for us in the past. I get that mistakes happen and setbacks happen. I knew DT was going to be a blowoff expac after the Endwalker finale of the first arc, even if I think there's a lot wrong with it that I worry will continue to be poorly executed when the story gets higher-stakes. But for every criticism you see on here, you see someone that still wants the game to be the best it can be, that still wants SE to succeed and still wants FFXIV to be relevant in the gaming sphere. If they didn't care anymore, they couldn't post on here because their sub lapsed.

I'd like to think a company like SE has analysts to figure out what exactly "the community" is saying from a macro standpoint and interpret it for the team. Again, I don't know how the sausage is made behind the scenes, and for all I know all of our posts on here are just cries into the void while they do what they think is best with or without our input.

[CaptainLagbeard]

XIV is most definitely not the main reason they're doing this...
7's remake and Ever Crisis are probably more likely candidates for what caused this.


But with Dawntrail's reception and their overall recent output of games, it's an absolutely terrible look for Square.