By Nelson Schneider - 01/19/25 at 01:57 PM CT
Oh, dear. A few years ago, we reported that Japan was straying down the path of dictatorial control with their revised copyright policy. Now they’re straying down the path of censorship and stifling opposing viewpoints, and Square-Enix is Patient Zero.
The once-great RPG publisher revealed a new Anti-Harassment Policy that is really just an excuse to shut-down all criticism. Sadly, that’s the way these terrible policies always manage to sneak through and become law. It starts with a reasonable proposition that videogame company employees shouldn’t be sent death threats, or be doxed, or suffer any form of genuine harassment… but then quickly escalates into something like Square-Enix’s new policy, in which any criticism of the company’s products can be met with not only revocation of the critic’s ability to use Square-Enix’s platforms to criticize the company, but also full revocation of any and all game licenses for Square-Enix games the critic might have.
This has been justified by Square-Enix spokescreatures as an attempt to protect employees, who “do their best” and “just want to make something everyone can enjoy,” from withering critiques, which is fair. But when push comes to shove, most videogame developers are still anonymous when it comes to criticism, outside of ego-bloated “auteur” directors like Hideo Kojima and the like, so when critics have unflattering things to say about a Square-Enix product, they are generally criticizing the actual product and not the rank-and-file employees who worked on it.
If Square-Enix really wanted to protect its employees from “hurt fee-fees” over criticism of the publisher’s recent slate of terrible games… maybe they should put better directors and producers in charge of their various studios so they can start making praiseworthy games again. Of course, figuring out why Square-Enix can’t make good games anymore is “hard” (not really, but they’ve been struggling with the issue for decades now), whereas shutting down all dialog and criticism on platforms you control and revoking digital license keys is “easy.” However, the latter approach isn’t going to win the publisher any fans, and will, indeed, generate more harsh criticism, whereas the former would actually solve the problem.
