So Square Enix is in an odd spot. They aren't doing as poorly as many of the huge gaming studios, but they have been in a rough spot for many years now. It seems fan reaction to them is pretty bipolar as well, but what exactly is going on with Square? Well, I can't talk about behind-the-scenes, but I think I can speak about what the issues with Square have been just from following the company for most of my life. I won't be getting into many specifics here; I'm just speaking in general. I'll let you guys do deep dives on some of the things I'll bring up here yourselves. Let's start with the biggest problem...
1.) Their expectations for their games are wild
I will bring up their reboot of Tomb Raider some while back. By all rights, a lot of people did enjoy the game, and its sales surpassed many of the Tomb Raider games of the past. By all rights, this game should have been a major success. Yet, despite numbers that should have been impressive, the game failed to turn a profit and make its budget back. I think we see similar things across all of Square's major releases. The games all seem to be doing numbers that should impress, but more often than not they seem to lose money or underperform. Even with their good games, Square just doesn't seem to realize what the actual size of the audience for their games are.
2.) Issues with Censorship
As much as I wish this was a bigger issue to people here in the West, I do think it has been hurting Square in a smaller way. We've seen alterations to scripts with Live-A-Live for example, where dialogue was changed for the English-speaking audience because people felt it was a little too sexist. And honestly, it was a pretty mild line people got upset about. Then there were future updates to FF VII that altered outfits after the game was released. It's been a building frustration with Square. Yes, they somewhat recently separated themselves from much of the ESG stuff in Japan, but it's questionable if they are still going down this route.
Square is nowhere near the biggest offender of censorship of games, and honestly, their steps have all been really small compared to many others (Not to mention some stuff that honestly makes no sense people have complained about kind of muddied the waters of things they have done). This is why I think it's a really small factory in Square's current problems. It's just not as blatant as many others, so doesn't get the attention others do. Bigger fish to fry as it were, but I do think it's had an impact all the same.
3.) Insistence on the Anti-Consumer Denuvo
A while back I gave Square some degree of credit for going back and pulling Denuvo out of their Steam releases. Denuvo is an Anti-Piracy software that effectively grants far deeper access to your PC than it has any right to, among other issues. Denuvo is a rabbit hole all on its own, but there are growing crowds of people who refuse to download a game that uses it. Another subject to research, but throw me in the camp that will not touch a game that uses this.
Square Enix isn't really in a spot where I feel it's about to fail, and it hasn't built up the sheer volume of ill-will other companies have in recent years. Frankly, I think Square still has enough goodwill that if they start addressing their issues people would be on board with them. Square Enix was a huge part of my life as a child, and honestly, they still do things that grab my interest. I've got at least some hope because of recent actions, I'll always be happy when anyone distances themselves from the DEI nonsense, but Square is in a 'Let's keep an eye on what they do next' phase for me.