Square Enix, Remakes, and Stories Too Good to Fact-Check

Is Square Enix revamping its business model to focus on remakes and ports of old games? No. But blogs from Joystiq to Destructoid are reporting this story today, despite the fact that it is one hundred percent false. Some stories are just too good to fact-check.

The fun started on a website no one had ever heard of called PlayStation Universe, who reported:

Late Wednesday night, on their Japanese web site, Square Enix announced that it will be working under a new business model, focused more on re-releasing existing titles and creating sequels to older games.

Certainly an interesting story. Too bad it's entirely made up.

The crack team of journalists at PlayStation Universe had not, of course, provided any link to a source. First off, a cursory examination of Square Enix's Japanese web page reveals absolutely no news stories, site updates, press releases, or investor relations updates regarding a shift in platform strategy. In fact, the last time the relevant part of the site was updated at all was on April 12th with the release date of Dragon Quest Swords.

At this point, anyone interested in responsible journalism would know at the very least that the story should be looked at with a critical eye. Therefore, it was breathlessly reported as solid, irrefutable fact at Joystiq, Destructoid, Siliconera, and EvilAvatar among other high-profile outlets.

I'm sure they'll be very excited to know where the news came from. Given the strong similarities in the opening paragraph, PlayStation Universe doubtless got the news from this earlier story at Digg:

Square-Enix to focus exclusively on remakes and re-releases by 2010

The days are numbered for new titles from Square-Enix. Theire Japanese language website dropped a bombshell on the gaming world late Wednesday night Japanese time when they stated a change in their current business model that would focus solely on re-releases of older games and the occasional direct sequel to existing titles.

Great, maybe this site has a link! Oh wait, it's DailyGamingNews, a parody website. Let's read the rest of their article.

Finally, Final Fantasy VIII-2 will focus on the female protagonists from Final Fantasy VIII as they travel the world trying to find Squall, who many fans seem to think died at the end of Final Fantasy VIII
despite the fact that you fucking see him there at the very end of the end-game FMV cutscene. Presumably Square is assuming that anyone stupid enough to think that Squall was dead at the end of the game will be stupid enough to buy a second rate knockoff game just because it has the Final Fantasy name on it.

Yep, this is where the news came from -- a poorly written, profanity-laced humor article that PlayStation Universe was gullible enough to report as fact, based on the headline, and sloppy enough to not directly link. In their fumbling, they somehow managed to craft a story so compelling that major outlets were willing to report on it without any further research.

And people wonder why I drink.

HILARIOUS UPDATE: Two minutes after I submitted this story to Digg, somebody submitted the erroneous Joystiq coverage of the original, meaning they're immediately next to each other in the story list. Guess which one has more diggs thus far?

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.