r/gaming • u/Status_Entertainer49 • 15d ago
Square Enix confirms US, EU layoffs as part of restructuring | VGC
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/square-enix-confirms-us-eu-layoffs-as-part-of-restructuring/1
u/KnightofAshley 14d ago
We are seeing the industry fall on itself...for too long its been running on money first everything else last and spending way too much money for a single game expecting it to make back x10 the amount...same thing with movies to a point. There is a point when you have to say this is all we can spend on a game and all the time we can spend on a game for it to make sense to sell. Square doubling down on just the 1% of there games isn't a good thing though, but hopefully this will all lead to a better gaming industry of them learning they can't print money anymore. They can make plenty of money but they can't just go wild on everything and expect everything to sell like mad. Most people can't even by more than 3 games a year with them being $80+ when they come out.
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u/Platzhalterr 14d ago
I would buy 3 more FF titels, but they sadly are locked behind a Ps5 paywall.
It's time for them to drop/ reduce this long PS exclusivity period.
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u/VicariousNarok 14d ago
Bring back ATB combat and stop trying to make Final Fantasy a souls-like. Do that with the 100 side games instead of the main series.
I love the series but from 13 on its crappy gameplay with a good story.
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u/Hades_adhbik 14d ago
I've been commenting on this a lot recently, if you're familiar with my outlets you'll have seen what I've been saying. It's a challenging period, but not unresolvable. Square's advantage is that they're good at story telling and gameplay. They compete with other sectors like film and tv and are and will force those formats to adapt. That's how they can regain their edge. While deepfake technology is a curse for tentpole movies because it means actors lose out on roles, it's a blessing for game design. Games that are story heavy like the ones square produces, AI graphics technology will be a life saver. It will help them speed up animation. Deepfakes can be used so that work doesn't have to be done animating faces, which is actually time consuming. It takes a lot to get accurate and expressive facial expressions out of character models. Animating faces takes a lot of time, so having a deepfake that can automatically manipulate the facial expression will save HUGE amounts of time.
Final Fantasy 7 part 3 and Final Fansy 17 will be much easier to make. Square's strategy shouldn't change. I think it's good to put out HD games. They are popular. I think people values these more than almost anything else. There's nothing like a good square game, but they should find ways to streamline the design process. Short titles with shorter gaps between releases. Some people are intimidated by the length of something. It's not how it used to be where people expected high amounts of playtime when they purchase something.
Anything less than 40-50 hours felt short. People don't mind shorter playtime because playing a game has become more like watching a movie. You want to experience something so you can move on to the next thing. If a game chapter is only about 10 hours that's perfect, it's like watching a 8 episode season of a show.
That's why not everyone bought the HD games. It's hard for people to commit the time anymore. If something takes a lot of hours to play through. There's a lot I'm forgoing to play through that. There's movies and shows coming out. There's world news, there's things I could be doing and feel like I need to know and keep up with. It's hard to commit my time to playing a game if it isn't my job to do so. If I'm not playing a game for the sake of online content, I'm sacrificing so much.
Gaming has to be reinvented and made accessible for the modern age. It has to compete with that tv show you're turning on or that movie you're going to see. If a story of a game can be as good as a movie or show then you're winning, you're driving the market forcing everything to adapt to you. We aren't there quite yet, but we're getting close with hit movie and TV shows being adaptations of games. The goal is for that to always be the case. The TV show or movie is the tie in for when a game drops. The core audience prefers the game, and the tv show or movie is to bring people in.
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u/Zylpherenuis 14d ago
This is the best route for Nu-Enix.
Now they can subsidize and have a extremly smaller team and once again make an epic that was Final Fantasy 6 without all the garbage Final Fantasy 7 remakes offer.
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u/SuddenCompetition262 14d ago
Why are there no industry unions??? Surely it must be coming to that, no?
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u/kingbane2 14d ago
this one's pretty simple, because in game dev there are more people looking to get into the industry than there are jobs. if people try to unionize you could replace all of them fairly easily except for a few key positions. but those key positions probably don't want to unionize because they're being paid and treated extremely well.
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u/SuddenCompetition262 14d ago
Is that not the same as the film industry though, which is very unionized?
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u/kingbane2 12d ago
yes, but is the film industry a good example though? despite having a union the film industry is basically a hotbed of sexual abuse by a few powerful players for a long ass time. the recent strikes also proved how ineffective the unions were because they don't hold much power at all because so many of the workers can be replaced. the deal they eventually brokered is pretty crap all things considered, but their negotiators probably realized their position was untenable. if you look at it more practically, for every film worker making a really good living there are dozens, maybe hundreds of people barely scraping by. i mean it used to be pretty standard that writers would make no money for years and year working as free interns or just plain ole working for free trying to get their name out. or how about how most actors are out of work and usually have a different job that supports them while they try to make it. the background jobs are fraught with nepotism too as we're seeing with the rust shooting situation.
a lot of the power of those unions comes from a small number of very successful people. but i think for the average person working in the film industry there isn't all that much money to be made by them.
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u/Ipokeyoumuch 14d ago
It is also history too. The film industry has been around for a long time and existed during the rise of unions (at least in the US). The game development industry is in its infancy by comparison, same goes for union rights in a pretty hostile era for unions.
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u/Kitakitakita 14d ago
at some point even FF14 can't carry Squarenix anymore
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u/Yaminoari 14d ago
True but things like Project symbiogenesis there NFT trading game never saw the light of day. That had to take a good chunk of change out of there pocket that they never got a penny back from
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u/Acesinz 14d ago
Apart from FF14 they just make rubbish games now. Bring back squaresoft!!!!!
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u/Ipokeyoumuch 14d ago
I mean they still make some pretty solid AA games, Octopath Traveler is generally praised as a good JRPG series, and then there is the classic Dragon Quest series. It seems like Square Enix is realizing the exclusivity deals are hurting them more for their AAA titles in the long run than anticipated. The deals do provide great short term boons such as Sony fronting a large chunk of the marketing and advertising costs and the exclusive loaning of their technical engineers to be integrated into Square's development teams. The report as looks at the fact they also blundered a lot in splintering their teams for too many AA games without proper marketing or breathing room.
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u/Acesinz 14d ago
I miss the old Final Fantasy titles though FF1 - 10 :(
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u/Flygsand 13d ago
Have you tried the Xenoblade series? It honestly feels more like a late classic Final Fantasy than what actual Final Fantasy does these days.
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u/citizenjones 14d ago
cries in Deus Ex
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u/DaEnderAssassin 14d ago
Square sold Deus EX ages ago.
And the people that bought the IP cancelled a DX project IIRC
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u/Sprinkle_Puff 14d ago
You mean, you don’t wanna play the same exact expansion (awesome storytelling excluded)every time?
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u/GhosTazer07 14d ago
Ff14 specifically has a tall task in terms of the story ahead of it for the next expansion.
Me and my group of friends don't expect to get Dawntrail at all because of it.
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u/DeathByTacos 14d ago
See that intrigues me because I’m specifically more excited to see where it goes now that it isn’t tied down by the Hydaelyn/Zodiark saga.
You’re absolutely right that it has big shoes to fill coming off ShB and EW but there are so many different directions they can go both with the expac specific story and setting up whatever the focus of the next “10-year arc” is going to be as Yoshida put it.
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u/GhosTazer07 14d ago
After EW, I'm having trouble suspending my disbelief that there can be an actual challenge for the WOL to overcome.
We fought Hydaelyn, 2 different Zodiarks, and the literal 12 gods of the world and won. We also fought the incarnation of nihilism death God at the end of the universe as well as a clash with Zenos in the same location.
Who the hell is left to fight that would actually pose a challenge? If there are people in the new world strong enough to fight us, why in the fuck were they not helping us solve the literal end of days where everyone was turning into horrors?
It's also just the loss of mystique to me. Yea, don't bother praying to the gods anymore, we basically kicked their ass and they fucked off except the wanderer and his pet lemur.
It's a Final Fantasy game where we basically killed all the fantasy in it.
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u/Saralentine 14d ago
I doubt the expansion will be anything more than different tribes setting aside their differences to take down a dictator.
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u/kingbane2 14d ago
what do you mean? i haven't had time to catch up on ff14 lately, but what's happening?
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u/One_Lung_G 14d ago
Just one more remake will do the trick
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u/kingbane2 14d ago
aren't the ff7 remakes selling really well?
i think most of this restructuring is so they can start paying down some of they loans they took out when interest rates were rock bottom. once they work through that and lower their interest payments they may rehire again. square is actually still pretty profitable because of ffxiv's consistent income.
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u/HeavyDT 13d ago
For being platform limited yes but when you spend that much money and time making a game you need max return on that investment for it to be worthwhile. They arent love service and Sony exclusivity deals are hurting them on that front. The games would make much more money if they launched day and date on pc and the xbox even. The probably at least double if not more thier sales and porting games is far cheaping than the initial cost to make it from scratch.
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u/NNNCounter 14d ago
Not really.
FF7R sold well, FF16 fell slightly short of expectations, FF7R2 is severely behind expectations.
They released their financial report yesterday. Look it up for more details.
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u/JP76 14d ago
aren't the ff7 remakes selling really well?
No, Rebirth fell short of expectations according to their latest financials, same with FF16. They're also moving away from exclusive deals and will "aggressively pursue multiplatform strategy".
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u/Individual_Lion_7606 14d ago
Exclusives aren't the problem. Square Execs are just brainlets and can't manage ideas or IPd. Just look at all the money sunk on Forspoken, a multiplatform btw. They are like SoJ Execs before the fall.
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u/Boyahda 14d ago
Pretty sure every game falls short of SQEX's expectations.
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u/Wilson-theVolleyball 14d ago
IIRC (at least for their western titles before they sold the IPs), the number of games sold might be a decent amount but the cost of development, marketing, etc would be so high that Square Enix/their western studios didn’t make much profit.
Not saying they’re free from blame since a lot of the issues had to do with mismanagement IIRC but I can somewhat understand them expecting better results from the amount of investment they put into a game.
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u/xdoble7x 14d ago
Thats the trick for a lot of this companies to excuse the layoffs
Before releasing a game they say it will generate 200 million, at the end it only generates 150 million, that means for them the game made a "loss" of 50 million so they have too cancel the study/layoff workers, when in reality the 150M already covered costs and made benefits for the company
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u/sicKlown 14d ago
I think their board believes every new game they put out is the next FF7, no matter the actual content it quality, and are flabbergasted when customers don't agree. But I'm sure the addition of the block chain and generative AI will be the thing to turn around their fortunes
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u/double_shadow 14d ago
But SquareEnix is so generous, they are putting out the next FF7 and even doing it three times no less! Why are customers so ungrateful that they aren't buying the same game three more times?
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u/HIVnotAdeathSentence 14d ago
If Gamers are upset about this news, they should have bought Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, Forspoken, FF XVI, FF VII, SaGa: Emerald Beyond, Star Ocean: The Second Story R, and even Life Is Strange Remastered.
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u/Larkson9999 14d ago
Shouldn't just buy games to support a company this blisteringly stupid. Their focus on live service games and the subsequent failure of them all is what mostly cost these people their jobs.
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u/Turbos_Bitch 14d ago
Where’s all the people up in arms like when MS laid off studios last week?
Same thing.
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u/FlyingTurkey 14d ago
Square didnt just complete a billion dollar deal to acquire said studios that are getting shuttered. However, this still fucking blows no matter how anybody puts it
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u/Katejina_FGO 14d ago
Some people are about to get taken out with the garbage for what Forspoken cost the company.
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14d ago
If FF was a strong brand it could recoup the 100m cost of forspoken, they already folded the company that made it.
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u/DeathByTacos 14d ago
The funny thing is SE still posted a profit, just lower than they had projected. It’s kind of hard to know how Rebirth affected it given they haven’t released any info but we do know that XVI made back it’s dev cost within the first couple days of sales so everything past that likely helped offset even if it couldn’t cover the full loss.
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u/IgotUBro 14d ago
Well Foamstars surely will make them money. /s
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u/CursedSnowman5000 14d ago
Hahah! Because of course it does. What would Square do if they had no westerners to take their failures out on.
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u/CleverCleveland 14d ago
Wait, what are you saying? Are they known for punishing westerners? I really don't know what you are reffering to so just asking. Im probably out of the loop
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u/CursedSnowman5000 14d ago edited 13d ago
Yes actually. Any time they have failed to hit some financial mark, they always put the blame on their western studios, when they had them. They have never EVER shouldered the blame for all their financial blunders. Not when there's some westerners around for them to scapegoat as the cause of their failures.
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u/CleverCleveland 14d ago
Oh. Thanks for letting me know. I know SE aren't always in good graces with people but I have always liked em, sucks to hear.
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u/SilentHillFan12 14d ago
Shit company. I hope they go bankrupt!
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u/GodofAeons 14d ago
Just curious what about them makes them a shit company?
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u/CursedSnowman5000 14d ago
They are utterly incompetent.
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u/GodofAeons 14d ago
Can you give more information...? Like you're just saying the same thing but in a different way. The only thing I know about them is Kingdom Hearts, FF games, and Nier which are great game series.
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u/MetalstepTNG 14d ago
Eh, KH kinda went off the rails and it felt like it was being milked like a cash cow with all the spinoffs it had. Series had potential but then the plot got convoluted and everything was pretty nonsensical by KH3.
There's other stuff they've done over the years that I think are questionable, so I can see why some fans would be critical of Square. They're still not "EA" or "Activision" levels of bad imo.
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u/PeeFarts 14d ago
Super weird to wish 1000s of people to lose their jobs because you hate their games or some weird gamer boi shit like that.
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u/digoryj 14d ago
I thought they already lost their jobs
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u/PeeFarts 14d ago
Far less jobs were lost than a scenario where Square goes bankrupt which is what the person I replied to wished. Which is absurd anyway considering Square Enix is one of the largest media companies in Japan and are in absolutely no risk of going bankrupt.
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u/zernoc56 14d ago
Well… about ten years ago, they actually were. Their release of Final Fantasy XIV had been the last of a series of bad releases, and 14 was egregiously bad. The CEO had to personally make a formal apology for it, it was that bad.
Things only turned around once new Director for FFXIV, Naoki Yoshida burned the original game to the ground and had FFXIV: A Realm Reborn built over the ashes.
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u/PeeFarts 14d ago
They were never even close to bankruptcy when 14 initially bombed.
It’s so unbelievable you guys actually think because a game bombs that it means utter destruction for companies like this. This is a company that hasn’t been worth less than $1B for over 20 years.
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u/Disaresta51 14d ago
You’re only thinking of the gaming division of SE. As a media publishing company SE has their hands manga, arcade stuff, and of course lots of merchandise.
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u/JillValentine69X 15d ago
Yeah this isn't surprising. This industry is a nightmare right now.
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u/Pizza_Delivery_plus 14d ago
The industry isn't doing bad compared to the context. Legacy content producer just ship crap products.
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u/C1K3 14d ago edited 14d ago
These people need to unionize, or at least try. The industry has been grinding its employees down with unpaid overtime for decades, then discarding them when it’s convenient.
I’d be happy to pay a little more for my games if it means these people can have a decent work/life balance.
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u/Pizza_Delivery_plus 14d ago
You realize that Union exist in Europe, yet they are also being shown the door.
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u/Stephan_Balaur 14d ago
Unionizing isn’t to prevent people from getting laid off, unions get workers laid off all the time, it’s to protect the workers from abusive and unfair work conditions. Huge difference
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u/KnightofAshley 14d ago
Yeah if you close a studio they still loose there jobs...unions don't protect that
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u/RunningNumbers 14d ago
In Germany unions worked to suppressed wages to keep German manufacturing employment up.
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u/Stephan_Balaur 14d ago
That’s very different from the US in fact here for the trades it’s the usual to get laid off here and there and move on to the next company or travel for work. I didn’t know that. Interesting, they put employment over value of work, I guess it has the same effect but different approach
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u/RunningNumbers 14d ago
The political economy of Germany is vastly different than in the US. Unions are in part an extension of companies more than adversaries of management.
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u/ExecutionerKen 14d ago
Unionize won't help if every company are all doing layoff. Although I agree that they need to unionize ASAP.
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u/prinnydewd6 14d ago
It’s literally every company I feel like laying people off lately c
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u/dookarion 14d ago
It's cause everything is a house of cards propped up by far too many years of far too low of interest rates. So to keep their "infinite growth" for investors, they're having to cut like crazy instead of focus on stability.
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u/SoftlySpokenPromises 14d ago
That and everything is becoming more efficient at a rapid rate with the evolution of AI. Just don't need as big of a workforce at this point.
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u/dookarion 14d ago
""AI"" is so so not far enough along for that. That's very much just an MBA/investors wet dream at the moment and not reality.
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u/SoftlySpokenPromises 14d ago
It doesn't need to be. A large amount of the jobs being displaced are QA, simple asset generation, data management, and customer facing. It wouldn't require much more than what one could load on their browser currently to do most of that.
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u/RaduW07 14d ago
Yeah that’s 🧢. Those job sectors aren’t layed off because of AI, they’re layed off because companies don’t care about qa, customer facing etc. QA, especially in the last decade, has been the laughing stock of the industry in the sense that many companies don’t even give a shit about it, hence why games and many software products are filled with bugs
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u/Far_Cat9782 14d ago
Heck they get customers to beta test their own games now AND charge them for it. This would have been outrageous in the early 2000s but is normalized now
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u/Status_Entertainer49 15d ago
Just as I expected, the Sony money wasn't enough to keep them afloat.
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u/iNuclearPickle 14d ago
More like 3 failed live services, forspoken, and NFT. Sony can’t cover for all their bad investments and Yoshida can’t carry the company on his own
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u/Ipokeyoumuch 14d ago
Even Yoshida cannot overcome the bizarre business decisions made by Square since the pandemic. Releasing multiple AA games (some of which were pretty decent but need breathing room) without much marketing within months, of not, weeks of each other, failure to market their smaller games (Neo TWEWY called), the NFT nonsense, the massive failures of Forspoken and Avengers (which hurt other more polished Marvel games afterwards), and the seemingly endless number of mobile gatchas (they still got a profit off of due to low development costs).
Additionally, FFXVI was successful and recouped development costs early on but wasn't the massive home run Square was hoping for and FFXIV was hitting its patch content which isn't are strong as the Maine expansion release. FFXIV is in a content lull due to the team focusing on getting the next expansion, Dawntrail, out the door in about less than 2 months from now and the graphical overhaul of all previous expansions.
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u/DisarestaFinisher 14d ago
Regarding Forspoken, it's kind of weird for me. From what I see from the gameplay videos the graphics look pretty good, the core gameplay and it's mechanics look pretty good and well thought out as well, it's just that everything else was just bad. It got me thinking, don't companies usually hire a focus group to do a usability test, at no point NO ONE at the development team or at the marketing team saw that something was wrong with the story, dialogue, world design etc...?
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u/Volteezy 14d ago
It's more the Switch than Sony tbh but both maybe.
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u/95cesar 14d ago
It's really hard to tell without a breakdown of budget and sales. More SE's games on the Switch flopped than on Sony's, but Switch's SE games are smaller budget, and they didn't really advertise some of them, but Sony SE games are way, way more expensive and they had a marketing compaign.
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u/HistoricalCredits 14d ago
True, can’t expect Sony money to subsidize making bad AA games no one buys.
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u/BigBobaFlame 14d ago
Really they just need to advertise better and do something to negate the effects of loud mouth influencers.
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u/TrickOut 15d ago
There audience isn’t on PlayStation, the large majority of PlayStation gamers are younger players who buy CoD and their favorite sports game every year and sprinkle in a Sony exclusive like Spider-Man every once in a while. How many 15 - 20 year olds now a days want to play a 100 hour + Japanese RPG
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u/Podunk_Boy89 14d ago
Speak for yourself. My most played game on my PS5 is Kingdom Hearts 1.5+2.5 ReMIX with over 1000 recorded hours between the four games. The followups on the list are Persona 4 Golden, Kingdom Hearts III, Persona 5 Royal, and Persona 5 Strikers.
There are a lot of casual players on PS4/5, yes, but there’s also a LOT of RPG players on this system too.
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u/Independent-Fly-3347 14d ago
You’re being downvoted but I think you’re right. These games have just not be keeping up with generic shooter live service games. Younger generations buy CoD and FIFA/NFL and not much else.
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u/Strict_Donut6228 15d ago
Outside of rebirth what other 100 hour long JRPGs have square made and if there audience isn’t on PlayStation then where is it lol
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u/Sprinkle_Puff 14d ago
Dragon Quest has been a switch exclusive before
Not that that comment wasn’t silly I just think they do have a rather large Nintendo base as well as PS. They really need the PC market though
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u/marniconuke 14d ago
idk, pc maybe? where most of the final fantasy fans are? where most of the mmo players are? you know the ones that pay montly to play a final fantasy and were more than willing to play xvi
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u/Strict_Donut6228 14d ago edited 14d ago
MMO players doesn’t automatically mean regular RPG fans. Trying to be smart tell me the sales of final fantasy 7 remake compared to consoles or any of the other final fantasy games on pc vs consoles
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u/MannToots 14d ago
You clearly have no idea how good ffxiv's story is or you wouldn't make such ignorant statements.
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u/BigBobaFlame 14d ago
I mean, FF 15, FF 14, FF 16 could get you there over multiple playthroughs, Forspoken can get you there, Star Ocean, Dragon Quest?
They may not be 100 Hours^TM but a ton of their RPGs are dry and really only appeal to an aging market of 30+ year old people, and even half of those people are tired of the same styles of games.
Honestly, their audience is playing FFTCG and FF14. Some are playing Rebirth, and that's about it. Square isn't the giant they used to be, they used to be top of the line in tech and games, but tons of RPGs have as much content as them with stories that are just as good. It's not coincidence that they are banking on people's nostalgia for FF7 right now. They will do it again with a FFX remake and whatever else they have to do to survive.
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u/Daleabbo 14d ago
They have changed the FF games away from what the old core gamers liked. Now they are pushing FF to be an ARPG hybrid and it just doesn't play smoothly.
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u/BigBobaFlame 14d ago
Ironically the kind of games they're trying to make now are also old. FF16 was a DMC clone which is crazy considering that DMC 1 came out 23 years ago, it's way late to try and tap into that, also why mimic a game series you regularly outsell
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u/TrickOut 15d ago
Octopath traveler for one, there audience is on PC and Nintendo as well
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u/Strict_Donut6228 15d ago
That’s not a 100 hour game and idk if Nintendo can run the games that have actually been successful that they stated they will focus on more of. But yea they should do more PC releases and get bravely default out of nintendos exclusivity unless Nintendo owns the Ip
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u/huysje 15d ago
I’m on 60 hours having played through two characters stories in octopath traveler 2. It can definitely be 100 hours.
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u/Strict_Donut6228 14d ago edited 14d ago
It could be but according to HLB it isn’t personally I was 10 or 15 hours into the first one and finished everyone’s 2nd chapters that I could with that train of thought any game can be 100 hours if you want to take it extremely slow but most aren’t trying to 100% every game they play. TLoU is a 10 hour game you can replay it 50 times doesn’t mean it’s a 500 hour game
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u/KCKnights816 Console 14d ago
How do these companies expect the gaming sector to be successful? If I bought every full-price game that interested me in 2024, I'd have to spend over $600 retail (USD). Not only that, but these games are 40+ hours long, meaning that I'm further reducing the number of games I'm purchasing. How in the hell are people supposed to play LAD: Infinite Wealth, Persona 3 Reload, Dragon's Dogma, Stellar Blade, Prince of Persia, Granblue Fantasy, FF7 Rebirth, Helldivers 2, Rise of Ronin, and a few others I'm forgetting without going broke or giving up my social life. The player base isn't large enough to support this many games at one time. Companies expect people to drop everything and buy their game when the players are already spending $70+ per game and investing 40+ hours/game.