Name some tangible problems caused here
Say you wanted to promote a game you were working hard on but everything about that game was leaked to the public, what sort of presentation are you going to give to advertise it?
Are you just going to go ahead with the presentation, hecklers be damned?
And if part of the game itself is intended to be a surprise in terms of impact on people, what then?
Yeah, okay sure, people can just ignore any and all spoilers, but sometimes that's inescapable, and there's no way to console the people being spoiled, either.
Even if you don't give a crap about spoilers or surprises, there's still the problem of game impressions which make or break the sale of a game. If people get the wrong impression of the game you're trying to sell, it's not gonna sell and you'll lose money.
DLC does this sometimes, especially if it's revealed via a leak... people get disappointed and they lose interest without even considering whether or not the DLC is or could be good or not.
If you get a spoilerific summary made of a game you haven't played yet, would that change your overall impression of the game?
Some people try to deny it, but the fact is any and all impressions we have of anything we're presented impact us.
And if all of this is still "intangible" to you, consider what games are: very intangible.
Game developers are trying to sell you an experience, but if that experience is revealed under false intentions, that ruins the overall experience.
Like going on a roller coaster ride for free only to conclude what someone else said about it.
FF has been around long enough that it's become a deep part of people's lives, so tangible or not, the experience of it is important to people, so when that experience gets destroyed, you might as well be taking a hammer to your game console.
This is also a problem in terms of competition. When you have a product that gets leaked, other game developers are going to know what cards your playing and they'll be able to release better products than yours and steal your customers essentially.
rather than deferring as evidence solely to the tantrums of a developer who would completely discredit himself by suggesting "maybe we should keep the best stuff for Japan" or otherwise punishing half of his work's potential customers for something that a) involved no more than a handful of people at most; b) could have been done by anyone anywhere (including Japan); and c) has no evidence of any harm caused in the first place other than his own vague, seemingly ego-fueled complaints.
You're assuming that's the plan he and everyone else at Square Enix will go for, but they don't just do everything he says.
People seem to think if Nomura breathes wrong it's going to be hell on earth here, that's probably not how things work.
Given that he's been shifted to other projects before, if his opinion was a problem management would have adjusted things accordingly.
And as I said before, yeah OK Japan-centric game development exists... but it has more to do with what sells and what's easier to sell in that region versus how hard it would be to sell it here... that's the harsh reality of business.
If you don't want all the goodies to go to Japan, complain to Square Enix about it publicly, I would totally support you in that endeavor. In fact that's the way to go when you want to change how things are handled nowadays. Tweet about it to them, e-mail them, let them know your opinion.
Gamer opinion is more valuable than you might think.
While you're at it, explain how datamining Dissidia NT to get an idea about upcoming DLC was so substantially detrimental for it but not for FFXV. Because if you don't think that game was datamined, glitch exploited, and otherwise hacked to hell and back from the release of its first demo up to the present day, then boy, have I got some news for you.
Dissidia NT was an ARCADE GAME first and foremost... the fact they relied heavily on Gacha-like Lootbox formats for releasing game content and the fact the game involves Multiplayer experiences with barely any single player aspects, those factors probably were the most detrimental to the game compared to anything anyone else could have done to access the game's data.
Rather than saying the DLC leak was detrimental in that case, the game itself was detrimental to itself. The leak just made things worse, essentially.
And this isn't the first time they've pulled DLC from Dissidia, as even in Duodecim, because of the PSP getting decrypted, a lot of what they planned to sell us got scrapped, so most people had to get the alternate costumes from people who were lucky enough to get them.
Duodecim was still salvageable in terms of its content but still, when bad things happen to a bad (or at least poorly received) game, it just makes things look even worse.
And here's some news for him: "Transgressions" like this are people engaging with his product. Showing interest in it. Were he not so self-absorbed, he would have considered that it's a good thing that there are people eager enough to get their hands on his work that they can't wait for arbitrarily timed delays and 90s-era press announcements for so much as a morsel of information.
If he was as self-absorbed as you say, public opinion on his games would hardly affect him, and yet it does.
Also I'd hardly consider leaks and datamining to be "engaging a product", more like ripping it's brain and heart and guts out.
Also you can't arbitrarily blame him solely for Square-Enix's business and advertising practices. That's partly on them too.
Like I said, voice your opinion to them, if you don't not much will change here.
Please elucidate that for me then. If there's more to this than "Trust the guy flipping the Monopoly board over that there's actual problems," I want to talk about it.
You might want to cool your head a bit.
Of what? So Yoshida and Tabata don't/didn't?
It's called Overwork... also the "Crunch"... in Japan it's especially a problem because they focus heavily on producing results with their work ethic at the detriment to people's physical and mental health.
Of course, I don't expect you to sympathize with someone like Nomura for that.
The Crunch has been talked about more here in the west, but it's still an ongoing issue that needs resolving in other regions.
