Understanding Square Enix

[Potling]

Today I looked for a CT retranslation and I was thrilled to find one... until I saw the patch was removed thanks to yet another C&D letter.
I want to understand why SE carry out such seemingly illogical acts. The only argument I can think of is that such a retranslation causes a potential drop in the sales of CT:DS, but this is surely statistically irrelevant?
Such a C&D letter does, on the other hand, further alienate and frustrate the long-suffering fanbase. Is that no longer relevant to this monstrous organism, known as Square Enix?
Why do Square Enix choose to inflict such misery on harmless well-intentioned fans? Is it greed, sadism or ideology?

[tushantin]

Why do Square Enix choose to inflict such misery on harmless well-intentioned fans? Is it greed, sadism or ideology?

The former. We have had a lot of discussions about this, but good question nevertheless.

I'm sure the other Compendiumites could explain this better than me, so I'll be brief. See, when I last applied to a company for employment they wanted to test put my artistic skills to test, and asked me to decipher the meaning behind their previous logo (of course, I passed the test). One question they asked me was what did green symbolize in their logo, and I explained what the color in general could symbolize in general (ranging from nature, to ecosystem, to human emotions) and in what the company stands for. But they told me this:

"But you forget one most important factor that the color Green stands for: it is money. Economy. No matter what your belief is about the world's industries, every corporation's first and foremost intention is to become successful standing pillar of economy. Without money, a corporation fails to function."

...Or something along those lines. I do remember that they called me A Man Of Vivid Dreams, but they refused to employ me only because my ideals might disrupt their newly standing company.

To a really large corporate usually public relations don't matter, but their statistics do. Hype creates demand, which causes supply, and the Media industry is pretty good at pulling things out. They play a wretched "Stick and Bone" game, eliminating any possible hindrances to their sales without a second thought, then releasing (or in this case, milking) editions and franchises to boost their sales. Because obviously, if a game is good, even the company-haters buy it.

Oh, and if you're talking about boycotting at this day and age, trust me, it won't work. Chances are, people would call the boycotters crazy for taking games seriously.

...Even if games are art-forms (well, some of them).

[Bard_of_Time]

Allow me to put Square Enix in terms that we can possibly understand.

Square Enix looks at a project. They look for one thing in that project: $. If they see that the project has potential to bring in $, then they get all  about it. If they see that the project has little to no opportunity to MAKE $, they get all about it. This negative $ shall now be represented by $

Final Fantasy, to Square Enix, may very well be written as such: F$$$INA$$L FAN$$$$$$$TASY $$$ XI$$$V.

However, it seems that things relating to Chrono Trigger (such as retranslations for the SNES, a port of Chrono Cross, or heaven forbid A NEW GAME) are like this: CHRONO $$$$$$$$$$$$$ BREAK.

Quite frankly, it's not cool, and it's probably not true. But what can we do, man? What can we do.

[Romana]

I think we should try to keep this as level-headed as possible before the thread slips into its inevitable full Kagero Studios "SQUARE ENIX ARE SOUL-SUCKING VAMPIRES" mode.

While I'm not denying it was a dick move, SE probably only C&D'd Crimson Echoes due to it
a) being brought to their attention
b) coinciding with the sales of CTDS (with the possibility they believed the patch was for the DS version, as its title is the exact same as the SNES one)

Allow me to put Square Enix in terms that we can possibly understand.

Square Enix looks at a project. They look for one thing in that project: $. If they see that the project has potential to bring in $, then they get all  about it. If they see that the project has little to no opportunity to MAKE $, they get all about it. This negative $ shall now be represented by $

Final Fantasy, to Square Enix, may very well be written as such: F$$$INA$$L FAN$$$$$$$TASY $$$ XI$$$V.

However, it seems that things relating to Chrono Trigger (such as retranslations for the SNES, a port of Chrono Cross, or heaven forbid A NEW GAME) are like this: CHRONO $$$$$$$$$$$$$ BREAK.

Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger have both been recently ported; Cross to the PlayStation Network's downloads, and Trigger to the Wii's Virtual Console and PSN. I'm not sure what you're getting at with "retranslations for the SNES", either.

[tushantin]

But BoT is right. SquareEnix, like any corporate, will only see media and franchises that are of good commercial value, which is a logical thing to do.

Problem is, at this point of time SE is merely milking franchises rather than innovating. Then again, as BoT stated, what can we do?

And the answer is: BRING IN THE DREAM SPLASH!

[Potling]

The problem isn't that SE are focusing on their cash cow franchises, as long as the fans are allowed to create their own CT content. The problem is that SE are bullying harmless fans with their intellectual property.

What can we do about it? No idea.

[Nexus]

I'm sure the other Compendiumites could explain this better than me, so I'll be brief. See, when I last applied to a company for employment they wanted to test put my artistic skills to test, and asked me to decipher the meaning behind their previous logo (of course, I passed the test). One question they asked me was what did green symbolize in their logo, and I explained what the color in general could symbolize in general (ranging from nature, to ecosystem, to human emotions) and in what the company stands for. But they told me this:

"But you forget one most important factor that the color Green stands for: it is money. Economy. No matter what your belief is about the world's industries, every corporation's first and foremost intention is to become successful standing pillar of economy. Without money, a corporation fails to function."

...Or something along those lines. I do remember that they called me A Man Of Vivid Dreams, but they refused to employ me only because my ideals might disrupt their newly standing company.

To a really large corporate usually public relations don't matter, but their statistics do. Hype creates demand, which causes supply, and the Media industry is pretty good at pulling things out. They play a wretched "Stick and Bone" game, eliminating any possible hindrances to their sales without a second thought, then releasing (or in this case, milking) editions and franchises to boost their sales. Because obviously, if a game is good, even the company-haters buy it.

That is pretty much spot on for the current stat of Square-Enix. They are a corporation with one goal in mind and that is making money. I haven't seen a decent game from them in a while and it seems I might not any time in the future.

[Lennis]

I suppose these things work in cycles.  Square/Enix has now become large enough to create demand through a media blitz rather than the more time-consuming process of making innovative products.  In the short term, this undoubtedly makes them money hand over fist.  The numbers would seem to reflect that, at least before Final Fantasy XIV.  In the long term it is a perilous course.

The thing about public relations is that it can spike very quickly - in one direction or the other.  Anger your customer base and things can get bad in a hurry.  One need look only at Toyota.  The unintended acceleration problem turned out not to be credible, but because of the way the company handled the issue the damage was a lot worse than it otherwise would have been.  In Square/Enix's case, the problems with FF 14 were absolutely credible and they had to pull a last-minute public relations campaign to save face (by promising patches and making it free to play), but it was too little too late.  Significant damage was done to their reputation, and it will not quickly be forgotten until they make greater effort to innovate.

What S/E perhaps forgets is that competition can take advantage of these lapses in judgement and turn a rainstorm of misfortune into a flood.  They can't buy everybody.  Eventually a smaller company will come along and steal a large percentage of market share away from them with a higher quality product.  This is the position Square was in 25 years ago.  They made everyone else in the RPG business look like amateurs.  Now they are looking more and more like the amateurs they overtook.  That is what happens when true developers are replaced by accountants.  The same thing will happen to the next upstart company that grows too big to be run by a small group of innovators, and the cycle will begin anew.  It is a sad fact of human nature.
 

[Ramsus]

The real problem is that Square Enix, Co, is a Japanese corporation separated by language and culture from all its Western fans. Their regional offices are just IP lawyers, sales, marketing, and game localization teams with little to no real say in anything the company decides to do.

So it's quite reasonable to understand why Square Enix of America doesn't care about what the fans have to say -- they have no input of their own on the products they sell. All they do is localize, market, and sell. If you were in that position, then you'd eventually grow to dislike all the loud, demanding fans, and you would just learn to ignore them after a while.

It's also quite reasonable then to see the regional offices taking a hard line against IP infringement, since that's most of what they do -- enforce their copyright and trademark rights. They don't have the authority within their corporate heirarchy to do anything else, like license the rights to their properties to interesting projects. They don't even have the authority to turn a blind eye when it might be beneficial to the company, and so they don't even consider the possibility of doing so.

So really, the behavior of the company is merely a reflection of the physical and legal structure of the company.

[HeadlessFritz]

Money square-enix would have done without C&D - money square-enix have done = 0.

Number of CT fans s-e would have pissed without c&d = 0

Number of CT fans s-e would have pissed without c&d = a lot

**** square-enix logic!