Early copies of Final Fantasy XV have already been circulating and everyone's got a taste, not sure if a drop or a splash, of what's coming for one of the world's most popular RPGs. Game director Hajime Tabata took center stage to speak about the game's spoilers, that became an instant viral item by the way. The talk happened during a launch event at London which was recently held.
Obviously Tabata was upset about it as well as Square Enix. The circulating spoilers for FFXV can mean devastation to their business. In general, if you spoil something, of course that would be disappointing too. Tabata then released quite a long statement about this matter, shows that they are pretty serious about the issue.
As posted at GamePur.com, Tabata stated about the anxiety and excitement once the game finally rolled out but despite the mixed emotions, rain started pouring on their parade as people received very early copies of the game and leaked parts of it to the world. Apologies were also sent because of the incident.
In Japanese terms, spoilers are called "netabare", according to Tabata, and he also added that they are very rampant. The spoilers are literally spoiling the fun for a lot of Final Fantasy fans who were waiting for a long time to play FFXV. Sales and production people are also worried about this too. Tabata expressed deeply that FFXV's widespread spoiler issue is "a sad state of affairs".
Tabata also stated that they are currently looking into this and whether spreading the spoilers legally would affect the business' success. If allowed, they will take legal actions in taking them down. Tabata ended his statement that the widespread spoilers were not fair and not fun for fans who have been waiting for FFXV.
How This Could Be Stopped Or Reduced In The First Place
I wrote an article about Bethesda's new policy on being strict when it comes to early game copies. In summary, they simply do not want to give away early copies of the games to reviewers unless it is exactly launch day or 24 hours prior to launch day. It may sound like a buzzkill but it is indeed a very effective way to avoid spoilers, like what happened with FFXV.
By implementing this policy, game reviewers will have little time to play the game before writing a review about it. This can protect the interest of the video game and the company. Spoiling a game 24 hours before release is a lot better than having it spoiled weeks or even months before. The point is, people get too excited to broadcast something, especially if they are the first ones who got there, this is natural and cannot be stopped. The only thing that can be controlled is the release of early copies.
This may not be the ultimate solution hence legal actions need to be taken for those who spoil, if possible. There are other means of getting copies of playable levels but at least this 'big' source can be stopped by the said 24-hour review policy. The bigger the team creating the game, the bigger the chance of leaking information. So I guess Benjamin Franklin was right when he said something about 3 men keeping a secret. How would you feel if something you have worked on is just shattered by mere spoilers? Hit us with your thoughts on the comments section below. Keep it here, keep gaming.
