Wark Digest #232 - Quality Automated

Welcome back to the Wark Digest, your weekly newsletter of new developments and historical insights from the Final Fantasy universe. I’m Chris, aka Hoogathy, and this week is a sour one, with some disappointing announcements out of Square Enix HQ.

This week’s newsletter is 1348 words, a 6-minute read.

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Quality Automated?

It’s one of those baffling weeks to be a Final Fantasy fan, as Square Enix made a pair of frustrating announcements yesterday.

What’s going on?

• Speaking to employees on an internal call Thursday, Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu announced a “fundamental restructuring of the overseas publishing organization”—which means layoffs at the company’s operations in Europe and North America

  • As of this time there’s no confirmed number of how many employees are affected, but at least 140 people at the London office were told they were “at risk”

• The move is meant to make operations outside Japan more “lean” and “agile”…and save about $19.6 million annually

• The same day, Square Enix announced a partnership with the University of Tokyo, called the Joint Development of Game QA Automation Technology Using Generative AI — “improving the efficiency of game development processes through AI technologies”

  • The project will be carried out by a group of “more than 10 people,” comprised of University of Tokyo and Square Enix staff, with the goal to “automate 70% of QA and debugging tasks in game development by the end of 2027“

What we thought:

• Well, this is the kind of disappointment I’ve been dreading since Kiryu was named as Yosuke Matsuda’s successor back in March 2023

• The two decisions aren’t connected directly, but either way, laying off untold numbers of human beings and turning around to say they’re putting more energy into AI is a bad look

• Square Enix has been dancing around Web 3.0 features for years now—and while you can’t blame a tech company for sniffing around a new potential technology to see if it offers any benefits, the pushback to all of their attempts has been strong, and the results weak (remember the supposed Parasite Eve revival that turned out to be lame NFTs?)

• Other companies are beginning to see the writing on the wall and analysts threaten that the “AI bubble” could soon burst… and now Square Enix is dipping a toe even further, while forsaking hard-working staff that have helped them through the last few years

• Square Enix has been stripping back overseas divisions since 2022: first selling off its North American studios and IPs (Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, Tomb Raider, etc) to Embracer Group, then streamlining operations last May alongside the aggressive multiplatform approach they keep championing—one has to wonder how much is left to be streamlined anymore

• Cutting off an entire limb to replace it with Artificial Intelligence is guaranteed to be a disaster

• If any area of game development is grueling and time-consuming, it’s playtesting and quality assurance, so it’s natural to wonder how you can improve it… but as something so subjective, it’s just not a task that AI is suited to perform

  • Look at any gen-AI video where someone sprouts extra fingers or a person appears from / disappears into a background, and you’ll see why

  • You’d be better off just not playtesting in the first place

• Going multiplatform, yet retreating more insularly into Japan, is hypocrisy at its finest when the company has relied on its international reputation for nearly 30 years now

What’s next? It’s frustrating that the executive side of the company keep making silly mistakes while the creative side is seeing a renaissance of sorts. Let’s just hope the former doesn’t weigh down the latter.

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The Numbers At The Root

Driving these big announcements is Square Enix’s midyear financial report, detailing how the last six months (April 1-September 30, 2025) went—let’s break down what it means for Final Fantasy.

What’s going on:

• Square Enix “is continuing determined efforts to strengthen the competitiveness and profitability of its business segments”… which led to today’s disheartening announcement

• Compared to the same period last year, some recurring trends emerge:

  • Net sales are down 15%, but operating income is up 28.8%

  • Digital Entertainment: net sales down 25.6%, operating income up 19.3%

  • Amusement: net sales down 4.6%, operating income down 0.3%

  • Publication: net sales down 3.1%, operating income down 11.3%

  • Merchandising: net sales increase 32.3%, operating income up 100.7% (!!)

What we thought:

• The HD Games segment posted a loss due to a lack of new titles compared to the previous year, but regained some profitability

  • Seems the Xbox launch of Final Fantasy XVI didn’t move the needle much

  • Net sales may be lower than they could be, as SE is always marking their games down dramatically

• The MMORPG segment is in the “lull between two FFXIV expansions” period, with lower sales and lower subscription counts

• Usually the Amusement section is a quiet hero here, but even their sales were down—selling fewer amusement machines but maintaining “roughly flat” income from operations and prize item sales to amusement facilities

• It’s also a tad unusual that Publication didn’t hold up as well either, when SE’s manga is on a big new electronic platform

• The MVP? The Magic: The Gathering—Final Fantasy collab, which drove the Merchandising segment to incredible increases (and probably salvaged the tone of this report)

  • That this success didn’t spill much farther into the other segments (notably, the main games division) is disappointing—the TCG drummed up some interest, but perhaps not enough to make a big wave

What’s next? For year-end, the company now forecasts a 13.7% decrease to net sales and only a 1% increase to operating income. Slimming overseas departments may help these numbers rebound… but numbers aren’t everything.

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@itsbrianawhite

Briana on Instagram: "Some of these are masterpieces and some o…

Merchandise For A Good Cause

Aerith voice actress Briana White has organized a Tiltify fundraiser, supporting the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, where she, other voice actors, and companies around the gaming space are donating signed memorabilia for auction.

Signed art cards, posters, games, MTG cards, and even a PS5 face plate are up for grabs, signed by the likes of White, Brit Baron, Matthew Mercer, Erica Lindbeck, Max Mittleman, Suzie Yeung, and even Naoki Yamaguchi. Admittedly the auction ends very shortly after our publication time, but otherwise, you can check out the cast of Rebirth drawing their characters from memory in 60 seconds—take this as a mind palate-cleanser after the bad news this week.

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Around the Union

Hidden beneath Final Fantasy VIII’s epic tale of gunblades and sorceresses is a motley assortment of quirks that make its world simultaneously more authentic… and more weird, in a delightful way. Some of these secrets may have been hidden just out of view, so this week we break them down in “Final Fantasy VIII Has Some Weird Secrets!” How many of these have you found on your own before?

Over at Datalog, we also presented a list of “7 Incredible SNES JRPGs You Probably Haven’t Played!” Final Fantasy wasn’t the only franchise flourishing creatively on the Super Nintendo/Famicom

And lastly, on a more personal note: next Friday I’ll be participating in Extra Life, a fundraiser benefitting Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals! For the tenth year in a row, my gaming group is streaming games for 24 hours to raise donations for the Children’s Hospitals in our neighborhoods—a cause near and dear to our hearts, and our homes. The marathon begins at 8PM EST, Friday November 14th, and you can help us out just by tuning in!

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Until next time, kupo!