Square Enix asks early access players not to spoil a remake of a 25-year-old game—on the one hand, there are changes to the main storyline, but on the other hand, are you kidding me

A screenshot from Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined. — (Image credit: Square Enix)

Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined just got a demo—a generous one at that, spanning about three whole hours of the game and letting you carry your save over to your primary save. But Square Enix giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other, because if you happen to get the game early—say, via its Digital Deluxe edition—it has given you commandments not to spoil things for anybody on streaming services (thanks, Automaton).

You might point out that Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined is a remake. You might point out that it's a remake of a game that's over 25 years old, with the original game coming out in Japan circa 2000. You would be correct about both of these assumptions, but for a moment I'd like to play Orgodemir's advocate:

There are things that could be spoiled, including—as this post from ol' Square states, "As well as streamlining the original tale for better pacing, and deeper character development, the team have also added entirely new storylines to play through."

Are we expecting people to cross-reference what they're seeing with a 25-year-old game in real-time?
If not, is the expectation that they're gonna replay segments in carefully-controlled chunks?
If this is simply an ask to tag any main storyline playthroughs with "contains spoilers", then that feels… redundant, to me. If I'm watching someone doing the main story of a game, I can safely assume I will be learning things about the main story of a game.

Other requests from Square include not "live streaming or posting videos/images of gameplay after the boss battle in the Malign Shrine: Throne Room" until February 5, when the remake releases. Also, "you are not permitted to create edited video content or playlists with the goal of showing only cinematic scenes (as opposed to gameplay), or only listening musics, from the game."

And hey, listen. Square Enix holds copyright over this thing; far be it from me to tell it how to do business, but also—people are absolutely going to do that. This is the internet. They are simply gonna.

Mind, I'm also coming at this from another side of the pond. In Japan, copyright laws surrounding the streaming of videogames are far stricter: In 2023, a Japanese YouTuber was arrested for posting the ending to STEINS;GATE Hiyoku Renri no Darin, so there's actual legal precedent for this sort of thing.

Whether that's a reasonable thing to ask of the internet at large, though? That's another question entirely.

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Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

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