Final Fantasy XIV Players Concerned – Square Enix Announces Entry into NFTs
Square Enix CEO announced in a letter that the company will have a major focus on NFTs in 2022. The news did not go down well in large parts of the gaming community. Final Fantasy XIV fans were also concerned about NFTs in their MMORPG.
Here is what Square Enix announced: The CEO of the Japanese RPG forge, Yosuke Matsuda, turned in a New Years letter to the company’s investors and fans. In it, he gave a rough outline of the new priorities Square Enix would place in 2022.
Matsuda mainly talked about the Metaverse, NFTs and blockchain games in the letter. The CEO sees the technologies and features as having the potential to become the future of gaming, which enables the devs to develop new “self-supporting games”.
Based on the attention Blockchain and NFTs received in 2021, Matsuda anticipates a change within the gaming industry. Accordingly, Square Enix plans to participate in this change:
I understand that some “gamble for fun” players who are currently the majority have expressed their skepticism about these new trends and that is understandable. However, I believe there will be a certain amount of people whose motivation is to “play to contribute”. What I mean by that is that they want to make the games more exciting. Traditional gaming has not given this group of gamers any explicit incentive to do so. […]
CEO von Square Enix, Yosuke Matsuda
According to Matsuda, NFTs should therefore also demand “user-generated content”, ie content that the players themselves create in order to express themselves creatively. This type of content can now be rewarded and encouraged through NFTs, said the CEO.
He also refers to the “Play to Earn” concept on which MMORPGs like MIR4, for example, are based. This is where players can earn real money through grind.
You can read about what NFTs are in gaming here:
NFT is the new trend in gaming in 2021, companies are worth billions of dollars – but why?
FFXIV community is concerned about their MMORPG
This is what FFXIV players say: Matsuda’s news made waves in the FFXIV community. The players on reddit and in the official forums are concerned that the NFTs could also celebrate the move into their MMORPG.
In a big one Thread with over 3,700 upvotes Players reported who were disappointed and strongly opposed to it. Some expressed their hopes that FFXIV director Naoki Yoshida could prevent NFTs from being introduced into FFXIV. Others, however, warned that Yoshida might not have much say in such a decision.
Individual players even announced that they would cancel their subscriptions if NFTs actually came to FFXIV.
If they put the NFT stuff in a main FF game, I’ll be out. […] If the NFTs are relegated to Square Enix’s Mobile Spate, which are not owned by Division 3 [Entwickler von FFXIV] made then I will ignore them. As soon as it spreads to things I could play or buy, I’m out.
RekaAiA on reddit (571 upvotes)
In another thread, a half-fun gambler threatened that he would drag the owners of NFTs in the MMORPG into deadly area attacks. The thread received over 6,600 upvotes and a lot of approval.
Some of the players also blame the NFTs indirectly for the server problems of FFXIV, which have existed for several months and which resulted in extremely long queues when logging in. In a letter to the players, director Yoshida explained that the problems lie with the global shortage of semiconductors for the required hardware.
And while he didn’t mention the NFTs, some gamers perceive them to be partly responsible for the semiconductor shortages. The GPUs and CPUs required for mining are bought by the miners in large quantities and also need the scarce semiconductors.
On the official forums it was also noted that NFTs in FFXIV would be another type of monetization in the already paid MMORPG:
- The base game and the FFXIV add-ons must be purchased
- There is a monthly subscription
- There is an optional cash shop with cosmetic items and level boosts and story skips
- Various services such as changing the appearance of the character or server transfer are chargeable
Another section of gamers spoke about the unlikely NFTs could get to FFXIV. The necessary infrastructure is lacking for this and there would also be problems with Steam in this case. The MMORPG is available there, but Valve has banned blockchain games on its platform.
These are the reactions: Even outside of the FFXIV bubble, there were many users on social media such as Twitter, in official forums and on reddit who were rather negative about the news about NFTs. Most of the criticism of the CEO’s statement that SE is aware that a large part of the player base is against the NFT trends, but the company still wants to push in this direction.
In the comments, these users said that Square Enix wanted to turn their games into jobs where gamers should make money:
- “Why have fun when you can make money?”
- “You can really feel the contempt through the quotes on ‘to have fun’.” – ZoBo
- “Playing to Contribute sounds like a slogan from a dystopian movie.” – Pip Squeak
It was also criticized that the letter from CEO Matsuda only contains “signal words for investors” and does not list any specific applications for NFTs in Square Enix games that would make these players more fun, innovative and interesting.
The reactions are not surprising. The publisher Ubisoft had to hide their video via NFTs on YouTube because it had received over 22,000 dislikes for just a little over 1,000 likes.
What is your opinion on NFTs? Would you support them if they were to be implemented in FFXIV or would you rather keep your hands off them? Let us know in the comments.
Reference-mein-mmo.de
