Um.. summer release?

[Abriael]

What you linked forom reddit is related only to non-media beta testers and not to media coverage.

The media had no restriction whatsoever in their coverage and were authorized separately. The NDA simply didn't apply anymore for us for what previews were concerned and we were allowed to talk about every single aspect of the game. In fact basically every outlet talked about more than the elements listed in that link.

The screenshot restriction is common practice in the industry, and there's nothing strange or suspicious in it. I'm personally a fan of taking a million screenshots and adding ginormous galleries to my previews. My Archeage one had 388 screenshots in it for instance, but I'm completely aware that it's a very normal industry practice to embargo screenshots until the drop of the general NDA (and some do it for media even AFTER the NDA is dropped).

For instance we weren't allowed to post our own screenshots even for Civilization V: Brave New World, and there's going to be absolutely no graphical change from vanilla Civ V and Brave New World. Why do they do that? Simply because that's common practice. Not all devs will abide to it, but most will.

Mind you, it's obvious that there's no intention to hide the looks of the game, as Square Enix themselves are showing plenty of it, and for some mysterious reason, while western outlets were asked not to use their own screenshots, all Japanese ones were allowed to.

This is probably due to SE Japan and SE USA and Europe handing media relationships completely separate from each other, but one thing is for sure. If SE had any intention to hide stuff during previews the restriction would have worked for everyone, Japan included (screenshots on the internet travel faster than light).

Opposite to what you think, I was absolutely surprised by the drop of the embargo so early in the beta and by the lack of coverage restrictions. I fully expected SE to wait for phase 3 (and actually a couple weeks into phase 3, not on the very first day, to force people to actually experience content before writing) to drop the embargo, as it's most likely that much more content and more polish will be conducive to even more positive previews.

I was so surprised that I didn't prepare in any way beforehand, thinking I had plenty time until phase 3, so I had to cram the preview writing for 15 hours in a row.

If there's one thing we can take from this, is actually the geometric opposite of your post, and it's that SE is very confident about the quality of the game and the feedback received, otherwise they wouldn't let us loose with writing about it.

And honestly, it doesn't seem you're clarifying now. It seems you're backpedaling. There aren't many ways to interpret "Every news outlet has been under a contract to not give honest feedback about FFXIV"

And that's simply false.