Is the Final Fancy XIV Composer Plagiarize

Recently, the Industrial Band accuses Final Fancy XIV composer of plagiarism. But Square Enix denies the claims.So what the truth is?

With the release of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn‘s patch 2.0 “The Gears of Change,” Square Enix added the Containment Bay S1T7 instanced fight, prompting players to fight the evil Sephirot (not that Sephirot), and apparently Industrial Metal/Rock band Powerman 5000 has taken issue quite vehemently with one of the songs, accusing Square Enix’ prolific composer Masayoshi Soken of plagiarism on Facebook.

At the bottom of the post you can check out the video of the fight including the soundtrack, and “When Worlds Collide” the song that Powerman 5000 alleges was plagiarized.

On Feb.26, Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida took to the official forums to provide a response, denying Powerman 5000’s claims.

While we can’t claim to be a big music expert, we can personally say that the similarity between the two songs seems quite vague, on a rather common progression in industrial rock.

 

Reddit user Lemagex posted a rather detailed analysis on the issue:

 

 

Masayoshi Soken has produced countless tracks for Final Fantasy XIV, and demonstrated at several events a very strong ability to compose on the fly.

 

One thing is for sure: this kind of vehement and fairly unsubstantiated claims thrown on social media with the risk of falsely smearing the reputation of a fellow artist aren’t a pleasant show, no matter how edgy one wants to appear.

 

In any case, you can judge on your own below.