Castle Magus

Yes, Woolie, this is the same industry. This is just the same industry, taken to the inevitable logical extremes. You're actually surprised by this?

With that said, though... "imposing daily Christian worship"? o_O Yeeeeeeeeeeesh.

For what it's worth, I haven't bought a Final Fantasy game since Final Fantasy XIII (only the first one, not the sequels), back in 2010, so I guess this is all entirely my fault. But then, on the other hand, I also didn't contribute to the sales numbers for FF15 or FF7 Remake, either, so maybe not so much. *eye roll*

As for FF7 Remake/Rebirth/Regurgitation (or whatever they end up calling the third part, assuming it ever actually gets made/released, at this rate), I intend to wait until a full-ass video game is released, and all parts of that single, whole-ass video game are available in a reasonably priced bundle that is fully available on PC (so far, only the first part is on PC[1]), and none of those parts are infected with shit like Denuvo or whatever, before I even begin to consider maybe purchasing it someday.

And considering that they have not, to this day, removed the Denuvo infestation from Final Fantasy XV on PC, despite that game having come out in fucking 2018 (on Steam), it is on my "do not buy" list, where it will remain until the contamination is removed, though that is looking ever more unlikely as time marches onward (since, apparently, it was added before Irdeto switched to a time-based subscription model for Denuvo, which is why more recent games tend to drop Denuvo like the plague it is after a year or so, nowadays). And since the same corruption is still in FF16, too, that's also still on my "do not buy" list and will remain so until the pestilence is removed.

"Oh man, this industry is going to fucking crash soon." Please, Pat, don't get my hopes up so.

"No layoff announcements just yet. We will see." Yeah, Woolie, that's pretty much the true indicator of success/failure these days. Well, except that even games that sold like gangbusters are still seeing their dev teams almost immediately laid off...

[1] - And the whole thing probably won't be properly available on PC until, say, at least 2030 or later, since the second part is still exclusive to the Playstation (and I won't consider the second part coming to Epic Gangrene Shit in 2025 as being "available on PC" at all), and the third part hasn't even been created yet, for any platform, obviously.

They don't start talking about the thing in the video title until almost 19 minutes into this, but once they do start talking about it, that's pretty much the entire rest of this 1:15:47 video. And I agree with pretty much all of it.

The gist:

• Stocks, the stock market, shareholders and all that shit suck scabrous scrotum, full stop.
• Square-Enix, and companies on the same path as Square-Enix, spend way too much fucking money on making their games, because the line must go up, always and forever. Except... the line can't and won't go up, always and forever.
• Square-Enix, and companies on the same path, must now compete not just with each other but also with live service games or GaaS/"gas games"/whatever the fuck we're calling them now, such as Fortnite and all that other dogshit.
• AAA and AAAA (and however many more A's you want to use) game development is innately unsustainable and will die, sooner or later. The modern video game industry (or at least that part of the industry) will crash eventually.
• Companies like Larian and Nintendo and Valve who don't have to answer to stockholder bullshit will weather the storm of the modern video game industry crash just fine. As will, apparently, the companies that make all the dogshit "gas games" now (and I don't necessarily disagree with that, either, but I sorely wish to hell it wasn't true).
• Some stuff specifically about Square-Enix and how they should stop taking profits away from the "good games" like (ostensibly) Final Fantasy XIV (you know, a MMO game about which I personally do not give the first, single shit at all) to waste on developing dead-on-arrival shit like Foamstars or Babylon's Fall or fucking Nosgoth or whatever. (What the actual shitting fuck even is Foamstars? Makes sense that I never heard of it before now, because it sounds like complete garbage, just like all the other "gas games.")

You know, back when I started actively wishing for the video game industry to crash, something like a decade ago or whenever, I never really thought of that as anything more than pie in the sky at the time. Now, though, as the years have gone by, it's seeming more and more like the inevitable, inexorable reality of the situation. And I can only say, "Good. The modern video game industry has been terrible for decades now, and it fully deserves to finally reap the whirlwind."

Yeah, it really does seem like we're just jumping from one scam to the next, over and over again.

Fuck off forever, Squeenix.

(EDIT) On a vaguely dim, only semi-related bright side, Squeenix has apparently removed the malware from Live A Live, so there's that, at least. Maybe this Star Ocean 2 remake will similarly be actually worthwhile in six months or so, too. (/EDIT)

There is no way that Beyond Good and Evil 2, if it ever does actually get released at some point, has any chance whatsoever of being even remotely good. (Also, Woolie, it has "only" been 15 years, not 20.)

Also, at the start, they mention Forspoken and how Squeenix dissolved the dev team that made it after, like, a month or so.

It's kind of sad how none of these companies (Squeenix, Ubi, EA, Activision Blizzard, etc.) who, when they have a dev team make a game and then the game does badly and then they punish the dev team by "absorbing" them or else just straight up firing them, have the self-awareness to realize that the common denominator in all of those cases is... those companies. I mean, this isn't (or, at least, wasn't) a post about EA, here, but just think about all the devs that EA bought up over the past two or three decades and then, after the output of those devs almost immediately turned to shit explicitly because of EA's worse-than-useless meddling, EA killed off said devs (while continuing to milk the rotting corpses of said devs' IPs ad infinitum). And yet, EA never once stops to consider the obvious fact that maybe they are the reason this keeps happening over and over and over and over and over. As usual, sadly/frustratingly/enragingly, all the other big publishers seem to look at EA as a role model, rather than a cautionary tale.

Requiescat in urina, Square Enix.

Now, if only Square Enix would just sell off the rest of their gaming stuff (e.g. Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Nier, Parasite Eve, all the Mana stuff, Chrono whatsit, etc.) to others who actually still care about all of that, then Square Enix could really go all in on the blockchain crap. (And if that were the case, maybe we could start getting such games that weren't infested with Denuvo again, too.) That would be best for everyone involved. Well, except for Square Enix, because they would very quickly cease to be. Which would still be best for everyone involved, to be honest.

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Yeah, fuck Square Enix and fuck NFT bullshit.

Blah blah yet another game showing up in the Steam News window whose name I've already forgotten now yadda yadda Square Enix sucks ass yakkity yak fuck Denuvo forever bibbidi bobbidi boo.

Almost exactly the same post as the one before, just replace "Crystal something" with "some new Star Ocean game whose subtitle I've already forgotten."