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The story
A FFXIV (Final Fantasy XIV) development staff member publicly quote-tweeted a critical post about himself on X (formerly Twitter), sparking enough buzz that it was picked up in X’s “Today’s News” feed. On 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board, while some took issue with the critic’s abusive language, others questioned whether it was appropriate for a developer to personally expose a critic like that. The discussion eventually expanded into claims that posts critical of the operating team get deleted from the official forum (Lodestone), while criticism of other companies’ titles is left up for long stretches — turning it into a broader debate over the fairness of the moderation.
What people said
Even if the other guy was being an abusive customer (kasuhara), that probably doesn't excuse a compliance violation.
Ends in 'M' lol (5ch slang for a poster ID ending in the letter M — often used to imply it's the same person posting repeatedly)
They really do control speech like China or North Korea.
Developers are supposed to be behind-the-scenes people anyway.
The company's just off its rocker.
No wonder nobody uses the forum lol
Meanwhile posts trashing other games stay up forever lol
Lure the enemy in, then dogpile them — basic military strategy lol
But if the developer posting under his own name does it himself, that's kind of the end of the line, isn't it?
Why is there this push to control speech and stop people from airing FFXIV's flaws outside official channels?
Are they out of their minds?
Venting complaints about FFXIV on social media is the correct move.
Since Dawntrail, the believers on X have lost both numbers and momentum.
Up through around the first half of Endwalker, posting a complaint would bring the faithful running to make a public execution out of you, but these days X is actually safer than the forum.
Is it full of trash-talk about DQX (Dragon Quest X) by any chance?
I've seen a post trashing DQX that ran on for pages and pages.
Don't remember the URL though.
That excuse might fly if it weren't a paid service.
Found it right away when I searched.
https://jp.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/32828155/blog/5560425/
It's more like a personal diary than the actual forum, I guess, but trashing other games in an official space seems a bit off.
This really is a religion.
Normally, harsh criticism of another game would be the first thing to get deleted — it has nothing to do with FFXIV gameplay, and by their own stated logic it shouldn't "contribute to the FFXIV diary" either.
But they've got this sly streak of trying to boost internal unity by manufacturing an external enemy, so they let it stay up.
It's the other way around — the players are the ones turning into haters.
Did Yoshida, who's had a string of failures lately, get sick of taking the heat and drag this guy onto a livestream saying "he's the one who made it"?
No idea about this specific case, but as a rule they've always dragged out "the guy who made the unpopular part" to explain himself.
An organization that produces a boss like that will produce subordinates like this too.
And since he's a nobody, even the knight brigade that worships their god found him easier to attack than Y(oshida).
Even if Yoshida stepped down, this is the kind of company where people like this just climb the ranks instead.
Exactly.
Yoshida keeps saying "worst case, just criticize me," yet somehow he keeps dragging development staff out or naming them.
Probably because it's convenient: success is his credit, failure is someone else's fault.
Quite a few staffers have ended up as scapegoats because of it.
If they didn't delete it, their promotion track would be over lol
Why is "praise FFXIV, trash DQX" the one thing that never gets deleted?
Looks like it's turned into a running series lol
If it were the other way around you'd get account-banned lol
Feel bad for the DQX staff!
So they're playing "funeral" with DQX, and the FFXIV team just lets it slide?
That's basically inter-office bullying, isn't it?
Seeing stuff like this left alone makes you want to suspect there's some internal faction warfare going on.
It's always users vs. the dev team.
More like: users vs. Yoshida's entourage + the Yoshida knight brigade.
And meanwhile, ordinary users keep turning into haters one after another.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Since A Realm Reborn, FFXIV has been sustained by a devoted fanbase, but within the thread there’s a view that, since the Dawntrail expansion, part of that fanbase has grown increasingly frustrated with the development team. This incident, too, was taken as emblematic of the tension between the team and its users. The discussion centered on two points: whether it was appropriate for a developer to personally expose a critic via quote-tweet, and the way the official forum is moderated. On the latter point, posts #50 and #89 cited URLs from the Lodestone forum to argue that criticism of other titles is left up indefinitely while criticism of FFXIV gets deleted. It should be noted, however, that this isn’t an official statement from the development team but a claim based on individual cases users happened to find, and it doesn’t prove the moderation standards of the forum as a whole.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “[Good News] FFXIV Developer Responds to Criticism on X! Picked Up as Today’s News on X.”
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