I wasn't planning to make a post about this but after exchanging few comments with u/WAMIV, I figure this is worth talking about, and I figure this is probably the best place to talk about it.

There was a lot of controversy a few weeks ago on JP's forums when JP users discovered E-Guardian being listed on the ending credits as a 3rd party contractor. I am not an expert on these kind of things, but AFAIK, E-guardian is known as a "Fire-extinguishers" who monitor, report and supposedly even intervene on any instance of public outrage that is happening in the social media on behalf of the company they are working for. As far as intervention is concerned, they will engage in trolling, white-knighting, and all kinds of fake-news/misinformation campaign that is reminiscent of what's happening in politics right now.

So what does this all mean? My guess is that either Alim is so tone deaf and incompetent that they need 3rd party contractors to tell them what they are doing wrong. Or Alim is following a directive from Square Enix (i.e Emergency summon Fest) and they are fully aware of the shitstorm they are causing, hence the need to hire a 3rd party contractors to mitigate the damage.

Either way, I feel like this shows the lack of genuine effort to engage with the community, and it kind of feels like they are sending a private detective to check up on you instead of directly talking to you. Also, this makes me wonder whether hiring contractors like E-gurdian has anything to do with Square Enix letting go of our community manager on GL. As far as I can tell, it seems like they've resorted to addressing our concerns (i.e the whole EP system and veteran rewards) through in-game announcement, and they seem to have a pretty keen awareness of what people are complaining about without a community manager as the mediator.

I don't like to spread conspiracy theory, but this also raises the question as to whether some of the white knighting we see in the main sub may actually be coming from these kind 3rd party contractors. and this is precisely why I didn't want to post this on the main sub, as I don't want give people ammunition to call other people a Gumi shill and falsely accuse others based on this incomplete info.

Ok, on to the next topic. There was couple of instances of rate manipulation on FFBE and other Square Enix game that is worth mentioning. the Dragon Quest 10 app on JP recently issue an apology and compensation for their "lootboxes" that involved a six sided die. They came forward and admitted that the rates are not actually representative of the actual rates of rolling a dice (i.e 25% to roll a 1 and 7% to roll a 6). Apparently the rates were not published initially, and there was a lot of back and forth between users pointing out that something is wrong with the rates vs people white-knighting the game, but Square Enix eventually ended up coming forward as the review scores on the apps store plummeted over this issue.

There was also a big controversy over falsely advertised rate over at JP FFBE on CG Tidus banner. As you can see here. Youtube announcement clearly shows 3% for pickup 5 star units, but the real rate published in game was actually 2.5%. In response to this controversy, Alim basically made a statement saying that the rates shown in announcement are subject to change, and you should actually check the in game rates. They offer no compensation for this, and people were quite upset about it.

Now, I am sure some of you are thinking that this is very similar to the Regina banner fiasco we had few months ago on GL. The only difference I can think of is that the false rate on Regina was listed within the game, whereas the false rate on JP's Tidus banner was shown during youtube announcement outside of the game. Of course, none of these excuses their behavior but it does give us a glimpse on what Square Enix/Gumi/Alim feel like they can and can't get away with. Although they did eventually offer compensation on the DQ10 mobile game, it sounds like there was a lot of toxicity created over this issue within the community, and it really shows just how much these kind of behaviors can affect the overall mood and outlook of a community.

EDIT: I've wrote this in one of the comment response, but Square Enix was caught stealth marketing their mobile games recently too. Basically this user made a post reminding people that a new mobile game is out soon, and when people did IP search, they found that it originated from Square Enix server. This further proves that Square Enix is actively trying to infiltrate communities under false pretenses.