SE's pivot towards crypto and NFTs has me scared

[Vahlnir]

Fidget Spinners

My "old" mind still fails to understand the fascination with those things.

[Puremallace]

Good way to kill an MMO is to abuse RMT and especially do it with NFT's. Go ask the Korean developers how that turned out for any MMO they tried it in the US or EU. I assume Square Enix is smart enough to see they were trending world wide on Twitter for basically talking about how exploit their playerbase with something a large amount of people consider to be a scam business model.

It would be a complete nightmare in PR for Square Enix to actually do this. That press statement read more like a letter to the shareholders with every buzz word from 2021 all in one statement even admitting NFT's were stupidly over valued and most would goto zero.

[Rhysati]

Good way to kill an MMO is to abuse RMT and especially do it with NFT's. Go ask the Korean developers how that turned out for any MMO they tried it in the US or EU. I assume Square Enix is smart enough to see they were trending world wide on Twitter for basically talking about how exploit their playerbase with something a large amount of people consider to be a scam business model.

It would be a complete nightmare in PR for Square Enix to actually do this. That press statement read more like a letter to the shareholders with every buzz word from 2021 all in one statement even admitting NFT's were stupidly over valued and most would goto zero.

While I would tend to agree with you, I see no world where Matsuda would walk back everything he just said to the shareholders. He just went on and on praising this technology as the future of the world and how much money it's going to make all of them. He can't turn around now and go: "Remember all that stuff I said? I was wrong about literally everything!"

[ItMe]

While I would tend to agree with you, I see no world where Matsuda would walk back everything he just said to the shareholders. He just went on and on praising this technology as the future of the world and how much money it's going to make all of them. He can't turn around now and go: "Remember all that stuff I said? I was wrong about literally everything!"

Especially considering the language he used seems to indicate that they've already got a lot invested in this.
They're not just testing the waters so there's likely too much steam behind it to simply walk it back.
From the letter:

To address these changes in our business environment, the medium-term business strategy that we unveiled in May 2020 identified AI, the cloud, and blockchain games as new domains on which we should focus our investments, and we have subsequently been aggressive in our R&D efforts and investments in those areas.

[Thoosa]

This doesn’t mean they don’t try and do something for the next 10 years of 14 - maybe they decide to get rid of the sub because nfts could make them more money if everything is monetised, who knows. I don’t think we should accept this in our games, because we “play for fun” after all.

[Shibi]

I don’t think we should accept this in our games, because we “play for fun” after all.

Yes, but SE are chasing those people who "play to be paid"; Mod writers.
(and separate to these the goldsellers and housing-botters)

[Havenchild]

This doesn’t mean they don’t try and do something for the next 10 years of 14 - maybe they decide to get rid of the sub because nfts could make them more money if everything is monetised, who knows. I don’t think we should accept this in our games, because we “play for fun” after all.

There is alot of fearmongering going on atm but odds are this won't have an impact on FFXIV at the least in any current capacity. If it did arrive, it would come in the form of glam options probably with an alternative currency. However there are also some claiming they would leave FFXIV if SE rolled out NFTs to their other games and anyone saying that should already pack up shop as they have already test drived a new IP that gave them massive profits from NFTs. Items from FF are probably the most collectible around. If their intention is to expand on NFTs, I would imagine that they understand that people will invest into NFT items associated with the FF franchise. This includes people on these very forums who are naysayers. So it inevitably can arrive on the franchise with time but I doubt anytime soon or even some current FF in production. They still want to test the waters / market before jumping on their main series.

[dapperfaffer]

I don't know what an NFT is. Will devs create significantly less and worse content in XIV because of it? If not, then I do not care.

No, what would probably end up happening, or what would be the most likely scenario, is SE would create specific content tied to an NFT, then anyone who would want that content would buy the NFT. So SE would make tons of money off people buying the NFT but the NFT would devalue over time as more people bought the NFT to have the content. So what would happen is the value of the NFT would remain fixed for SE but depreciate for anyone who owns it. And then have NFT purchasable items only to keep the value of the blockchain high by limiting circulation of the NFT creating an artificial scarcity for the NFT. So for the player who invests in NFTs they would need to constantly be buying the content associated to the NFT in order to make money while SE makes money regardless.

What it would encourage is development for NFT specific content, that could also be double dipped into the mog store when the amount of the NFT hits a circulation threshold. That and people would think they would have resale control over the NFT which SE or any company will never do since that would require releasing more copyright control than what is financially beneficial for SE to do.

[Midlithe]

SE - Please do not implement NFT's in the FF world. I've no interest to see the game(s) I love become cash cows for corporate greed. That has led to the downfall of many other companies and it's sad to see SE going down that path. Microtransactions is a reason why I don't buy some of your other recently created games. You need to follow FFXIV example and leadership on how to balance "selling digital items" and keeping a game good enough for people to continue paying subscriptions as well expansions.