[UPDATE 2] – Dan Tsukasa’s ArtStation has also been deleted.

[UPDATE] – At the time of writing, Dan Tsukasa’s Twitter and Reddit accounts appear to have been deleted.

We’re all very excited that the Final Fantasy 7 Remake development is moving ahead. When it was first announced at E3 2015, it was like Christmas had come early, but Christmas is starting to seem like it may never come.

The Final Fantasy 7 Remake development cycle seems to be taking an inordinate amount of time. Everything we’ve heard from Square Enix suggests that this is not a simple remaster, but an entire remake and that it’s going to be a very different game.

However, the lack of information we’ve received and the time between announcements is starting to suggest that things aren’t all going rosy. Now, there are reports that the Final Fantasy 7 Remake development has been troubled. Maybe even involving a complete abandonment of all work at one point.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Development Woes

The issues with Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s development are apparently due to Square Enix abandoning all work completed by CyberConnect 2 and restarting from scratch.

Square Enix partnered with CyberConnect 2 for assistance with the action gameplay and video quality. However, in 2017 development shifted back to Square Enix internally and ceased to be a cooperative production.

With a change like this, it’s expected that there will be delays as staff are caught up on the project and work is transferred, but according to one source, the delay was much more significant.

Dan Tsukasa is a game designer, living and working in Japan. In a recent Reddit thread discussing the Remake’s Art Director’s comments, Tsuka posted some eye-opening comments.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake in Trouble?

Tsuka wrote that Square Enix doesn’t “have 4 years of work, [it has] 2.” He explains that Square Enix didn’t take CyberConnect 2’s two years of work on the Remake and continue, rather Square Enix “started it again because cyber connects(sic) work was just so useless and not far enough along.”

Tsuka also claims that CyberConnect 2’s work on Final Fantasy 7 Remake was “unusable.”

When has a company taking work away from another company ever been a positive sign of things? I know CyberConnect’s work was unusable, I’ve worked with them before, i know their level. And I know they outsourced to hell and back in order to get things to the point we saw them publicly, and it still wasn’t enough to save them.

When questioned about his knowledge of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake development cycle and whether he was simply speculating, Tsuka said;

I’m not speculating though. I’ve worked with these people and know people working still at both Square and CC2, I’m explaining what happened from what I know.

It doesn’t sound ideal

Other Reddit users pressed Tsuka on his knowledge, asking him if he knew people who were actively working on the development.

Yup, its the game industry in Tokyo, Square’s so large its rare to meet someone who doesn’t know anyone there. I’m unsure how to prove it though, I can’t get into any issues by saying what I’ve heard, or what’s common knowledge in the industry here (the common knowledge being that the project was taken from CC2 because it was so behind schedule), but if I were to name anyone working there, they’d get into trouble for sharing information, the same way I’d get into trouble if I shared information about where I work. So with that said, I can only prove I work in the game industry in Japan, can’t prove who I do and don’t know.

It seems odd that a developer actively working in Japan would make up misinformation so publicly. It’s also a rather detailed story to be a simple troll, though it’s always a possibility.

That being said, everything that Tsuka claims sounds plausible and lines up with established facts. If what he says is true, that means that after two years of cooperative development with CyberConnect 2, Square Enix pulled the plug and brought development to its internal teams.

By discarding two years of work and starting again, the entire development of Final Fantasy 7 Remake would have been massively set back. Which means we’ll all be waiting even longer to get to play it.

For now, Tsuka’s comments and what happened on Final Fantasy 7 Remake remains speculation, though I wouldn’t expect to be playing it any time soon.