Tag: SQUARE ENIX

Marvel’s Avengers Is Ending Development, Giving Away Cosmetics

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Image: Marvel’s Avengers

This may come as a surprise to the players who abandoned the game long ago and assumed this time had come already, but Crystal Dynamics and publishers Square Enix have announced the impending end of online support for Marvel’s Avengers.

In a blog post published on Friday evening, a latter signed by ‘Marvel’s Avengers Development Team’ reads in part:

To our amazing community,

After two-and-a-half years and introducing twelve of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, following Update 2.8 on March 31, 2023, we will no longer add new content or features to Marvel’s Avengers. All official support for the game will end on September 30, 2023.

Even after official support ceases on September 30, 2023, both single- and multi-player gameplay will continue to be available…

…As a show of our appreciation for our community, starting March 31, 2023 we will make all the game’s Marketplace, Challenge Card, and Shipment cosmetic content available to all players for free. Every single Outfit, Takedown, Emote, and Nameplate from the Marketplace, Challenge Cards, and Shipments will be free for all players from this date onwards if you own a copy of the game.

Gifting the full library of Marketplace cosmetic content is a way to thank our community by letting everyone experience the breadth and depth of content in Marvel’s Avengers.

We know this is disappointing news as everyone in our community has such a connection to these characters and their stories. We’re so, so grateful that you came on this adventure with us. Your excitement for Marvel’s Avengers – from your epic Photo Mode shots, to your threads theorizing who our next Heroes would be, to your Twitch streams – has played a large part in bringing this game to life.

We hope you continue to play and enjoy Marvel’s Avengers. We can’t thank you enough for your support and for being part of our super team.

– Marvel’s Avengers Development Team

While the opening up of the game’s Marketplace is framed here as a gesture of goodwill, it is of course that same marketplace—shackled as it was to some insane notion that every game needs to be a Forever Game, reliant on the grind inherent to a live service experience—that helped kill it off. ‘

While Embracer made a deal last year to buy the game’s developers, severing them from the publisher that made the Avengers licensing deal, it was made clear at the time that any games released prior to the sale would continue to be supported. Which suggests this decision is simply down to not enough people wanting to play or buy stuff in Marvel’s Avengers anymore.

As the note says, this doesn’t mean the game is disappearing off the internet entirely. You’ll still be able to play it, even in multiplayer; there just won’t be any further updates or even technical support for it after September 30.

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If you’re a player and want to see the specifics of what’s shutting down when, and what this means for individual updates, you can check that out here in a series of charts and FAQs. One of which contains the deeply funny reminder that Spider-Man must remain a PlayStation exclusive, even in death.

Image: Marvel’s Avengers

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Luke Plunkett

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January 22, 2023
The Specs For Some PC Games Are Getting Out Of Control

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Square Enix’s Forspoken is asking for a LOT of RAM
Image: Square Enix

Over the past few years, the minimum amount of RAM you’d need to play the latest games on PC has been somewhere around the 8-16GB ballpark. Unless, that is, you’re talking about some very weird outliers, both of which are also games from, or appearing on, the PlayStation 5.

Last month we learned that Returnal, a game released in April 2021 on the PS5, would be coming out on the PC in 2023 with recommended specs “asking for an eye-watering 32 gigabytes of ram”. 32GB! What the fuck! While that was just the recommended amount—the minimum is a still-hefty 16GB—it certainly stood out not just for the sheer amount needed, but the fact that it didn’t really seem like the kind of game that, let’s be real, would need that much compared to its peers. But having come from the PS5, most people simply wrote it off as a consequence of the game’s development having been a weird, console-first quirk and got on with their lives.

Image: Square Enix

Now, though, the Square Enix-published Forspoken—a game also coming to the PlayStation 5 but with a PC version hitting alongside it at launch—is doing much the same thing. It has 16GB of RAM as a minimum (just to run at 720p! On a PC!), with 24GB recommended and 32GB required if you want to run the game at Ultra settings. Returnal being a port of a PS5 game was one thing, but Forspoken has been developed with a PC version launching alongside the console edition, so it doesn’t have that excuse.

This is too much RAM! I bought a brand new gaming PC in 2020 and it came with 16GB of RAM, which at the time was fine, maybe even slightly excessive, because games were only ever asking for 8GB (2022’s Modern Warfare II, just for comparison’s sake, asks for 16GB to run at Ultra 4K). To have leapt to the point where certain PlayStation-related games (and almost no others!) are asking for 16GB as a minimum is wild, and I’m sorry Returnal and Forspoken, but neither of you are going to make me go out and buy new hardware just to play.

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Sony has done a pretty good job lately of bringing its games to PC, with everything from Horizon to God of War doing well enough to make ports a fundamental part of PlayStation’s release business going forwards (The Last Of Us, for example, is coming in March). Those have all been games released on the PS4, though, and so came with relatively reasonable specs; if this is the amount of RAM needed to bring PS5 games to the PC (and I’m not saying it definitively is, just that this is now a pattern), then Sony’s future ports might not enjoy such smooth sailing.

While we’re on the subject of Forspoken, a demo was recently released, and fan feedback has resulted in some changes being made to the game:

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Luke Plunkett

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January 17, 2023
Sonic Co-Creator Charged With Illegally Trading Over $1 Million In Final Fantasy Stock

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Photo: Kevin Winter (Getty Images)

Last month, the legendary co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog was arrested for allegedly purchasing shares in a development studio before its involvement in a Dragon Quest game was announced. A month later, he was arrested a second time for reportedly buying stock in a company that was set to work on a Final Fantasy spinoff. Yesterday, Tokyo prosecutors formally charged Yuji Naka for inside trading roughly $1,080,000 in Final Fantasy stock.

According to NHK, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office determined that Naka had been making a profit on insider trading (Thanks, VGC). For the uninitiated, insider trading is when someone with non-public knowledge of a company is able to use that information to trade stock at an advantage. Doing so is illegal in Japan. So Naka ran afoul of the law when he purchased shares in ATeam before the studio had announced that it would be developing the mobile game Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, a battle royale that was exclusively released for mobile devices. Though the game was announced in 2021, Naka was arrested on December 7 of this year.

This was a month after he had been arrested the first time for buying shares in Aiming, the studio that created Dragon Quest Tact. In both of these incidents, he was arrested alongside Square Enix employee Taisuke Sasaki. Sasaki was indicted for trading roughly $782,000 in stock.

If the two made a profit off the ATeam stock, it was presumably before The First Soldier was canceled less than a year after its launch. Square Enix had clearly been hoping to capitalize on the popularity of Fortnite and other battle royales. Instead, First Soldier suffered severe performance issues and was exclusively available on mobile.

Naka had joined Square Enix in 2018 to direct Balan Wonderworld, a strange action-platformer that was near-universally panned as a flop. The game was unfocused and confusing to many reviewers, and Kotaku included it on a list of the year’s biggest gaming disappointments. The director departed Square Enix in June 2021. Maybe Naka would have been better off if he had been focused on directing a good game instead of manipulating the stock market.

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Sisi Jiang

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December 28, 2022
The Best (And Worst) Video Game Names Of 2022
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Image: Shutterstock / Image Square Enix / XSEED / Kotaku / durantelallera (Shutterstock)

The line between an amazing video game name and a terrible one is nebulous. Some game names try so hard that they loop back around and become good, despite being objectively bad. Some game names are good only in that they use cool words, but the vibe screams, “I was created in a vat overseen by a focus group.” And some game names, who the hell knows what was going on there, but god bless the mind who came up with it.

Occasionally, there’s a video game name that is exactly right, managing to perfectly capture the essence of the game in question. More often than not, though, game names leave us scratching our heads. This year, we’ve decided to put together a list of some of our favorite game names of 2022, in no particular order.

They are a mix of good and bad and everything in between. Some of them will speak for themselves, but we’ll have the occasional commentary for some of the titles accompanying the list as well. Preemptive shoutout to Square Enix, the GOAT at bewildering game names such as this year’s Various Daylife. Never change, Square Enix. Speaking of which…
- CRISIS CORE –FINAL FANTASY VII– REUNION – Claire tells me that it’s an admittedly annoying name to type out, but to its credit, it does incorporate the themes of the game in there.
- You Suck At Parking: I’m queer so they’re probably right, but still, lol.
- Melon Journey: Bittersweet Memories: Tell me you don’t immediately want to find out what this game is about? Spoilers, it’s as cute as it sounds:
[Search for your friends] in a town full of adorable animals with eccentric personalities. Yet under this sweet surface lies a tale of crime and corruption… Where did Cantaloupe disappear to? Is the Cavity Crew as dangerous as Captain Hamley believes? How does the Kitten King fit into Hog Town’s struggles?

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- Choo Choo Charles
- Warhammer 40K: Chaosgate: Daemonhunters – Luke says: Warhammer 40K? There are too many of them! Chaosgate? Which one? It’s been over six months since this game came out and we still have to call it “that XCOM game with Space Marines in it.”
- Super Kiwi 64
- Unsouled: This is the most video games title I’ve heard all year.
- Triangle Strategy: Is it a game or a football play?
- Turbo Overkill
- Lil Gator Game
- 20 Minutes Till Dawn
- Strange Horticulture
- HYPER DEMON
- Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress: I bet you just learned something, didn’t you?
- Chop Goblins
What are some of your favorite game names of the last year?
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Patricia Hernandez

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December 26, 2022
Report: Sonic Creator Arrested Again, This Time Over Final Fantasy

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It was only three weeks ago that we reported the astonishing news that Yuji Naka, the creator of Sonic The Hedgehog, had been arrested over allegations of insider training in relation to Dragon Quest. Now, it’s being reported that he’s been arrested again for similar charges, this time allegedly regarding shares bought before the 2021 announcement of mobile battle royale Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier.

Yuji Naka, a name behind some of the most iconic Japanese game franchises of the last 30 years, could be in a whole heap of trouble. The man who took Sonic from a high school notebook doodle to one of the most famous gaming characters in existence was arrested in November, along with others, allegedly accused of buying shares in developer Aiming, shortly before it was announced in 2020 that the studio would be making Dragon Quest Tact.

Less than a month later, it’s being reported by Asahi that it’s happening all over again, but this time in regards to his allegedly purchasing shares in ATeam Entertainment, just before it was made public in 2021 that they’d be creating Square Enix’s ill-fated mobile game, Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier. According to Asahi, he’s alleged to have paid 144.7 million yen ($1,051,000) for 120,000 shares in ATeam. It’s claimed he was arrested alongside another former Square Enix employee, Taisuke Sasaki, who was also said to have been arrested over Aiming shares last month.

Were this to be a thing someone had done, it would of course be an attempt to profit from the increased share value such an announcement would cause, but given it would be based on non-public confidential information, that counts as insider trading.

Most recently, Naka had been working on Square Enix’s dreadful Balan Wonderworld, before being let go by the studio six months before its release. He says he later sued Square Enix over this, but has never disclosed the resolution.

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In February last year, Squenix announced Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier would be jointly developed with ATeam, before releasing it for mobile in November last year. Then, less than a year later, announced they were killing it dead. ATeam shares are now worth about half their value in 2021, and a fraction of their peak in 2013.

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John Walker

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December 7, 2022
Report: Legendary Sonic Designer Yuji Naka Arrested In Japan

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Over the past 24 hours a number of people in Japan—including a Square Enix employee—have been arrested on insider trading charges related to a Dragon Quest game announcement. Legendary Sega designer Yuji Naka is reportedly among them.

The scandal centers around a studio called Aiming, which in 2020 was announced as the developer of a new Dragon Quest game, called Tact. Last night, it was first alleged that 38-year-old Square Enix employee Taisuke Sazaki, who has worked on Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts games, knew of the deal before it was publicly announced, and along with a friend purchased a ton of shares in Aiming, hoping to profit when their share price (presumably) went up.

Naka, 57, who is credited as one of the main creators of Sonic the Hedgehog and who has also worked on everything from NiGHTS Into Dreams to Phantasy Star, has since been arrested on similar charges. According to this FNN report, Naka is accused of also knowing about the Aiming deal before it was public news, and taking the opportunity to purchase 10,000 shares in the company.

While most famous for his work with Sega, Naka had most recently teamed up with Square Enix on the ill-fated 3D platformer Balan Wonderland. He parted ways with the company in April 2021; these allegations stem from 2020, when he was still working with the publisher.

Naka was arrested by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, which is continuing its investigation. Naka is alleged to have purchased 10,000 shares, worth ¥2.8 million, or around USD$20,000. (Sazaki, meanwhile, is accused of buying ¥26.4 million worth, or around USD$188,000.) Authorities have yet to disclose whether any of the three men arrested so far still owned those shares, or whether they had been sold off for profit prior to the investigation.

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Ease your holiday stress
Vida Optima’s Delta 8 line includes gummies, caramels, and fruit chews, to kick back and chill out. The gummies and fruit chews in particular are a higher strength—25mg of hemp-derived THC in each vegan bite.

Kotaku reached out to Square Enix for comment.

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Luke Plunkett

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November 17, 2022
The Year Is Nearly Over, But You Still Have 10 Game Releases To Look Forward To

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Fantasy medieval game Blacktail, Krakow-based studio The Parasight’s debut, lets you play as folktale witch Baba Yaga in her bow-and-arrow-carrying youth. You command her fate, if she’s a good witch or a bad witch, depending on how you navigate the magical, dangerous forest she roams.

“When living memories of her past return as foul, walking spirits,” Blacktail’s website says. “Yaga is faced with no other option than to hunt them down in hopes of unraveling her own mystery.”

I’m excited by Blacktail’s premise—I’m a former little kid with vivid imagined memories of Baba Yaga’s gnarled hands and battered cabin in the woods. Though, I am a little annoyed that Yaga’s voice actress sounds British despite the character growing up isolated from everyone except, like, early Belarusians. I’m hoping the game’s story is so mythic and compelling that I’m distracted by the Anglo-Saxon intrusion.

Release date: December 15

Compatible with: PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5

What 2022 game release are you most looking forward to? Or are you keeping your sights set squarely on next year?

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Ashley Bardhan

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November 11, 2022
Square Enix’s New Farming Game Lets You Choose Non-Binary Pronouns

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Male, female, and cool hat. All the genders are accounted for.
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku

It shouldn’t be a big ask from gamers to have more gender-inclusive pronoun options in a video game, especially in RPGs. One producer at Square Enix thinks helping gamers feel welcome by including non-binary pronouns is such a small ask that it was a no-brainer to have it be a part of his new game.

The game in question is the cutesy farming simulator Harvestella, which RPG giant Square Enix just released yesterday on PC and Switch. Similar to Stardew Valley, characters in Harvestella are charged with tending to crops, befriending their neighbors, and overcoming calamity in the form of environmental disasters. Harvestella, Eurogamer pointed out today, features a character creator that offers players the option to choose male, female, or non-binary pronouns.

In an interview with Eurogamer, producer Daisuke Taka said he thinks it is “completely normal” for games to include a non-binary option for players. While having gender-neutral pronouns feels like a small part of the farming sim as a whole, Taka said it was important to let players choose their gender identity because the game is meant to be “for everyone.”

“The protagonist of Harvestella is the player,” Taka told Eurogamer. “We thought it was important to have the player create their own character, selecting different elements, including gender, appearance, voice and name. We felt this was important so players aren’t limited, and feel free to express themselves however they want and as a result are much more attached to their character.”

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Read More: Trans Inclusion Means More Than Just Adding Potential Gender Options To Hogwarts Legacy

Recently, characters in video games that’ve come out as gender-neutral have been met with ire amongst the bigoted peanut gallery of the gaming community. Look no further than the vocal minority within the Guilty Gear Strive fighting came community that had conniptions when Bridget and Testament came out as transgender and nonbinary, respectively. Fee fees got so hurt, one troglodyte took it upon themselves to impersonate a customer service representative and fake emails about Bridget’s gender.

In recent times Square Enix has been making strides in making sure some of its games are more inclusive. In a July 2021 interview with The Gamer, Final Fantasy VII Remake co-director Motomu Toriyama said LGBTQ+ inclusion is an important issue for both gamers and developers.

“In Final Fantasy VII Remake, we rebuilt the original game using the latest technology, but we felt that it should not stop at the technical side and we needed to update the story content being shown in line with modern sensibilities,” Toriyama told The Gamer. That same month, the company debuted a non-binary character mascot, Mina, for that year’s Pride.

However, the JRPG giant doesn’t always get it right. For example, someone might wanna remind Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida that, contrary to his centrist view that people of color walking about ye old Final Fantasy would violate the “narrative boundaries” of the upcoming game’s medieval European setting, Black and brown folk aren’t a “new game plus” feature on planet Earth.

I’m much more into the vibe I’m feeling from the Harvestella guy. “The visibility of gender non-conforming people has become much more commonplace, so we thought it was important to reflect this within the game and show that all players are welcome to Harvestella,” Taka said.

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Isaiah Colbert

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November 5, 2022
Hyped Mystery Square Enix Game Turns Out To Be NFT Junk

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Image: Square Enix

While several big gaming companies have flirted with the idea of non-fungible tokens, none has embraced the crypto scam with as much blind confidence as Square Enix. Now the Final Fantasy maker has finally revealed its first NFT stunt, Symbiogenesis, crushing fan hopes that the previously leaked name was actually for a long-awaited resurrection of cult-hit horror RPG Parasite Eve.

“NFT Collectible Art Project SYMBIOGENESIS Untangle the Story Spring 2023,” Square Enix tweeted on Thursday. A short teaser revealed the logo art alongside some upbeat electronic jazz. Announced at the Web3 Conclave event at India’s Game Developers Conference, Symbiogenesis will be hosted on the Ethereum blockchain and allegedly tell a story about characters whose art players can own as NFTs.

“The art can be used for social media profile pictures (PFP) and as a character in a story that takes place in an alternate world where the player can ’untangle’ a mystery by completing missions that revolve around questions of the monopolization and distribution of resources,” a press release reads. You can’t make this up.

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While the beloved JRPG publisher’s crypto ambitions are nothing new—the company announced a Cloud Strife NFT as an expensive collectible add-on earlier this year—the Symbiogenesis reveal is hitting some fans especially hard because they thought the name hinted at the return of Parasite Eve. The RPG thriller literally revolves around the symbiosis of a parasite and its host, and despite a brilliant PS1 game and decent sequel, the series has been dormant since The 3rd Birthday on the PSP back in 2010.

Today’s Square Enix tweet has already been roundly ratio’d, with Parasite Eve fans collectively shaking their heads in disbelief. But will it cause the publisher to finally revaluate its plans and put the NFT cringe pipeline on hold? Who can say. Square Enix is clearly having an identity crisis of sorts at the moment.

This year it sold sold its American studios behind Deus Ex and Tomb Raider, told investors it was open to partial buyouts of its other studios, and flooded the market with a ton of JRPG sequels, remakes, and remasters, while barely giving any of them time to breathe or, apparently, a marketing budget. And now: Symbiogenesis.

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Ethan Gach

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November 3, 2022