Copyright escapistmagazine
Square Enix has announced in its financial results that it's going to be under its "Square Enix Reboots and Awakens" business plan. While the general publicly traded business is happening, with the Final Fantasy company investing in AI technology, it's the end goal that's truly terrifying: replacing quality assurance (QA) with AI. In the report, it sets out that alongside its AI investments, it'll also be funding a project with "more than ten members" called "Joint Development of Game QA Automation Technology Using Generative AI". By "the end of 2027", the company envisions that it'll have automated "70% of QA and debugging tasks in game development". Wonderful, I'm sure this will go well. Does someone want to remind me what happened to Square Enix's Web3 and Blockchain ambitions from a few years back? The game shut down this July, and no one noticed? Good heavens. Square Enix has been gearing up for AI since 2024 Square's AI ambitions began last year, when it announced that it was going "to be aggressive in applying AI" to its future projects. However, companies that have already adopted this are now finding that they're regretting parts of it. A major example is Microsoft, which laid off its quality assurance team 10 years ago. While it's unclear what parts of modern Microsoft and Windows software are made by generative AI these days, it's laying off experienced or soon-to-be experienced QA teams that have been detrimental to each Windows update since. An ex-EA quality assurance team member spoke with Business Insider, claiming that he and 100 others were laid off, with his job - reviewing and summarising feedback - now being done by AI. Generative AI and large language models are fantastic at producing code, in some cases. When they're designed by coding aficionados, it's just the likely result. However, while they're fantastic at making it, they're less than reliable at getting it to work or make much sense. Generative AI will "hallucinate", or simply make up modules for JavaScript and Python if it doesn't have the answer on hand. Ever wanted to run imaginary code? Guess what, it doesn't work. It's fancy autofill at times, but one that isn't hellbent on changing "F#ck" into "Duck", but straight up being incorrect. Layoff boomerangs have become real in the AI world There's now a common occurrence at companies that opted in for AI staff, where data now shows a "layoff boomerang" is real. This is where people are being rehired after being laid off due to AI, to come in and fix the AI's mistakes. It was only last April when it was uncovered that Amazon's AI-powered "Just Walk Out" stores were actually 1000 Indians monitoring video feeds. So why would Square Enix be planning on effectively cutting 70% of its QA workforce? Well, it's not like the company has been in a good spot for quite some time. The November financials (which cover April 2025 to September 2025) paint an okay picture for overall "operating income", which rose 28.8%. However, it saw a 25.6% decrease year-on-year for net sales. Final Fantasy XIV has become a core staple of the business, but as this year didn't have an expansion or major update, revenue on that front is down, too. Yes, overall income is up, but the company, like any other, will be looking to "grow" even further. What's the easiest gig inside the company to let go of? Quality assurance. However, I don't think an AI is going to be able to fix the issues as Square sees them, because that's a deeper, much more complex situation to deal with. Has Square Enix lost the juice? Even taking a look at their release calendar for 2025, it shows a company that feels lost. This year has seen six remakes or remasters released. Despite being advertised as a new game, Octopath Traveler 0 is actually a reimagining of the gacha game. Next year will be led by another Dragon Quest 7 remake, with no news on where Dragon Quest 12 is, despite being announced in 2021. I'm sure there's a Final Fantasy game somewhere that's all about technology infesting the natural order of things.
