With Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker a little over a month away, players are watching and re-watching the new Job Actions Trailer released a few weeks back to try and discern what new skills and abilities their favorite new jobs are getting. However, as often happens with MMORPGs, many of the tooltips for these new techniques have been released on the internet–despite the fact that the information was supposed to be classified until next week.
During the Live Letter from the Producer, the developers also announced them Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker Media Tour, where they would invite popular streamers and content creators to experience the new playable jobs and give them plenty of time to compile videos and footage. However, these streamers were under a non-disclosure agreement that does not expire until October 13, after which they would be free to share what they had learned and created.
And yet, a full week ahead of the expiration date of the NDA, leaked information from Endwalker hit the World Wide Web. The full upgraded tooltips for tanks and healer classes were uploaded to the Final Fantasy 14 Discussion subreddit (though thankfully not the official one), and certain skills and abilities of other jobs have been trickling in after. As one could imagine, the streamers who had been invited to the Media Tour were less than enthusiastic about someone leaking this information behind the development team's back.
Leaking information is not an uncommon thing, especially for MMORPGs.Asmongold, a popular World of Warcraft streamer who recently started Final Fantasy 14, said in his response to these leaks that some games, like World of Warcraft, use the leaks as additional advertisement, and expect and even encourage them to the point that many people believe it is responsible for some of them. Final Fantasy 14, on the other hand, does not.
Naoki Yoshida, director and producer of Final Fantasy 14, has stated that leaking information is “the worst thing you can do,” as it ruins the experience for both players and the development team who has worked so hard to create for their players. This isn’t the first time information has leaked ahead of the game's schedule–both the Stormblood and Shadowbringers expansions suffered from similar problems, and Yoshida has vehemently denounced it both times.
With our three fan festivals as well as our patch updates, we tried to lay out elements that would surprise our players, and we want to bring an encounter that people may not have even imagined. It is very important for us to provide that surprise enjoyment. So leaking information is taking away that enjoyment and ruining that initial contact and emotion that we want our players to experience. So it is unacceptable and unforgivable.
The other reason is, it ruins the efforts of the development team. We have a few hundred people working on this daily, and when a spoiler comes out, it destroys what they have worked for. As somebody responsible for the development team, there are simply no words for me to describe how unfortunate that is. It is extremely frustrating. Square Enix as a whole does its due diligence and investigates all incidents of such leaks. They are taken very seriously.
On the other hand, some players don't see a problem with the leaks. They believe it unfair that Final Fantasy 14 uses gameplay information like this as a marketing tool, as other MMORPGs tend to be looser with class changes during expansion cycles, such as Guild Wars 2's elite specialization beta events or World of Warcraft's pre-patch events. With Final Fantasy 14's rise in popularity, there is bound to be increased strife between players, who all want different things from the game. As the community grows, veteran players hope that newcomers can grow to have the same respect they have for the Final Fantasy 14 team and their wishes.
Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker releases on November 23 for PC, PS4, and PS5.
Source: Reddit, GamerEscape