Final Fantasy VII Rebirth devs react to outpouring of encouragement organized by fans to counter harassment 

The Final Fantasy VII Rebirth community on X/Twitter organized a movement to collectively express appreciation to the developers of the game after they reported escalating cases of harassment by disgruntled users, including death threats. The developers reacted to the wave of encouragement with gratitude and assured fans that they’re still going strong. 

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the upcoming sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake and the second part of a planned trilogy. As its release on February 29 approaches, a certain movement by fans has been gaining attention on social media. On December 10, X user Lyndi Steinhilber proposed holding a #ThankYouFFVIIDevs event to fellow fans with the goal of blocking out toxic comments and encouraging the FFVII developers to create the game they want to make. The event was planned for December 17. 

Their call to action was successful, as users gathered in significant numbers to send the developers words of appreciation along with fanart and in-game screenshots. The event even continued for a couple of days and started trending on X. 

The movement was initiated to counter the words and actions of a portion of users who have been harassing the FFVII Rebirth developers, likely in an attempt to discourage them from making changes to the original game’s story. So far, there has been no information regarding how the story of FFVII Rebirth will differ from the original, but this hasn’t stopped some users from sending offensive messages to the developers based on speculation. For example, in November, FFVII Rebirth’s scenario writer Kazushige Nojima urged fans to stop asking him to “kill off” or “get rid of” specific characters (Related article). 
 

However, things didn’t end there, as Nojima continued to receive increasingly aggressive messages from disgruntled users. Nojima is known to be a guinea pig-lover, and he often posts photos of his beloved pet guinea pigs on social media, but he has mentioned that even such posts, which are completely unrelated to the game, started receiving offensive responses. 

All of this is no doubt what led to the idea to hold the #ThankYouFFVIIDevs event, which served to show the developers the good side of the fandom and block out the negative replies.  Naoki Hamaguchi, the director of the FFVII Remake trilogy, responded to the fans’ act of appreciation using the #ThankYouFFVIIDevs hashtag and added that he hopes everyone will enjoy the game. Kazushige Nojima expressed gratitude for the worldwide support and told fans not to worry about him

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is scheduled for release on February 29, 2024, for the PS5.

Written by. Amber V based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-12-20 10:22 JST)