Square Enix’s AI Adventure: The Future of Gaming QA and Layoffs?

Square Enix’s AI Ambitions

So, Square Enix is cooking up a wild plan—aiming to let AI do 70% of its quality assurance (QA) work by 2027! That’s right, folks! Sounds ambitious, right? It’s hard to believe they’ll manage this without putting the majority of their QA team on the chopping block.

The Big Brain Plan

With their latest quarterly financial results out, Square Enix has unveiled their grand scheme called “Square Enix Reboots and Awakens.” This three-year plan, which kicked off last year, is their attempt to shake things up in the game development and publishing world. Included in this report is their fluffy little announcement about teaming up with the Matsuo Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. The goal? To make game development as easy as pie by using AI magic.

In simple terms, Square Enix wants to automate the bulk of QA and debugging tasks, professing they can hit this target by the end of 2027, thanks to generative AI. But let’s be real—while automation is already strutting its stuff in game dev, aiming to overhaul most of the QA labor in just two short years is no small feat. If that wasn’t enough, similar attempts at AI integration in other big gaming companies have left employees scratching their heads in confusion and frustration.

Now, if you squint hard enough, you might see between the lines that this grand ambition may just be a fancy way of saying goodbye to a chunk of their QA workforce. Square Enix’s track record on so-called “efficiency” often coincides with layoffs. Ouch!

In the name of that “efficiency,” Square Enix is not just diving into a new era of AI. They’re also restructuring their overseas publishing organization, and last year, this led to a wave of layoffs in their US and EU offices. Just recently, more staff got the boot, as confirmed by some connected sources. A spokesperson claimed these cuts were made to position the company for long-term growth. Yikes!

So, keep your eyes peeled for the latest updates and quirky antics from Square Enix, because it’s safe to say the gaming world is in for quite the rollercoaster ride as they navigate their AI ambitions and workforce strategies!