The state of the Game

[MaikoRaines]

I sure can actually. Here's how:

Presenting a list of failures that SE spent all of FF14's revenue on instead of making the game better over the past decade:


- Murdered: Soul Suspect*
- I am Setsuna
- Lost Sphear
- The Quiet Man
- Left Alive
- Babylon's Fall** & *
- Marvel's Avengers**
- Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy**
- Forspoken*
- Foamstars

* Studio divested or closed following release
**Catastrophic financial loss

--It has also been disclosed by SE that they have suffered a 140 million dollar loss due to "content abandonment loss"--
Poof. Gone. Vanished. Nothing to show or present for it, just 9,333,333 months worth of sub revenue tossed into the furnace

So yeah. All that money and none of it went into re-writing the engine, or significant and timely QoL updates, providing more content, or just making the current content in general any better. When's the last time we had a good event with good rewards? (spoiler: Summer 2023). Even the christmas event was lame this time around. Unbelievable how people continue to defend this blatant ripoff

TL;DR - Revenue from XIV, or any successful project, doesn’t get gift-wrapped and handed back to the dev team with a note that says “Go wild.” That money goes into the corporate pool — the same pool used to keep the entire operation from collapsing when a dozen other projects faceplant. It sucks, sure, but it’s how budgets function. If you think CS3 would magically keep all the profit from XIV, then I’ve got some NFTs to sell you.



Not defending anyone or anything here — just offering a reality check.

You do realize that revenue from successful projects like XIV doesn’t automatically go straight back into that specific game's budget, right? That’s not how corporate budgets work. If Creative Studio 3 made bank, that money still gets absorbed into the larger company pool. It doesn’t just stay neatly in one corner of the building.

Failed projects, as frustrating as they are, still cost money. And it's the successful ones that often keep the lights on while the rest of the company burns through investment chasing new ideas — some that flop hard.

Do I agree with how Square Enix handles things? Not entirely.
Do I defend it? Depends — I care about FFXIV and want to see it thrive. I’d love to see every cent of its profit reinvested directly into making the game better, faster. But if the alternative is the company collapsing around it, then yeah, some of that money’s going to get siphoned off.

At the end of the day, this is a business. Businesses are going to do business things — whether we like it or not.

I’m not defending Square Enix — but let’s not pretend this is some unprecedented corporate scandal. This is just how big companies work.