FF14 player count reached the lowest point in 4 years. We lost 75% of the playerbase.

[Valence]

What people are also missing is what's currently going with labor laws in Japan under Sanae. They're rolling backward the work time regulations and asking people to "work more and put more effort until they can heavily invest in automation in order to cover for the crippling manpower shortage and aging population". And what happens when you can exploit work your workforce for longer amounts, you by extension need less of them, and therefore may end up with layoffs as a result.

Now that mostly concerns the construction/transportation/critical services fields usually covered by immigration, which has been a rising political wedge issue in Japan especially with the current reactionary voices in the government, so perhaps it's going to affect video games a lot less, especially when those aren't exactly known for their work conditions when it comes to crunch work hours, but still. What are you going to choose between an expensive western work force that can only work 40 and an expensive jp work force that can now work way over that amount? Even though their per hour productivity is bottom of the barrel?

I hope that does not affect the localization teams. Especially with XIV. French version has been a banger since day one (except for Haurchefant in ARR. I don't want them to change the localization team and localization for other language to be done in Japan.

Interesting. I find the french loc to be abysmal. I have a serious problem with how they translate almost everything, and everything reads like cringe to me. And let's not speak about the translation of job abilities. Ugh.