Upheaval at Square Enix: Now the CEO should also go

The upheaval at Square Enix seems to be bigger than expected. Just this week, the successful Japanese developer and publisher dissolved the developer studio responsible for Forspoken, Luminous Productions, i.e. its employees were integrated into the parent company. In addition, all services of the flopped Babylon’s Fall, which disappeared from the scene after about a year, have been suspended.

Looking to replace the executive chair

Now Square Enix has submitted a proposal for a personnel change, and it’s at the highest level. Acting CEO of Square Enix Yosuke Matsuda, who has been at the helm of the company for ten years this month, is set to be replaced by director Takashi Kiryu, who has been with Square Enix since 2020, according to Eurogamer. Square Enix didn’t hide its fascination with blockchain technology and NFTs, and wanting to apply them to games. Yosuke Matsuda already explained at the turn of the year from 2021 to 2022 that he could well imagine integrating NFTs into game development.

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This topic also seems to play a role in the forthcoming change in the top job if you read between the lines of the proposal justification:

“Given the rapidly changing business environment in the entertainment industry, the proposed change seeks to reshape the management team to embrace the ever-evolving technological innovations and maximize the creativity of the group to bring even more entertainment to customers around the world offer.”

Before joining Square Enix, Yosuke Matsuda’s successor, Takashi Kiryu, is said to have worked for a technology company dedicated to researching blockchain technology and Web3 – an alternative Internet based on blockchains and decentralization. Even if Square Enix seems a little shaky on its feet at the moment, the company has still been able to score with fans and players over the past few years with the continuation of the Final Fantasy series. But bad productions like Babylon’s Fall and Forspoken should be afforded less often in Japan.

Source: Square Enix via Eurogamer