The fantasy MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV has a lot going on musically right now.
As seen in the title image, Final Fantasy 14 has hidden a small tribute to the recently deceased musician David Bowie in the latest patch 3.2 in the “Anti-Tower”. His artistic persona “Ziggy Stardust” is immortalized in the world of FF14, in Eorzea.
A less pleasant confrontation with musicians has been triggered by another battle from the latest patch. The industrial band Powerman 5000 accuses Square Enix of having brazenly used one of their songs for the Sephiroth fight.
FF14 denies this and states that a track from FF VI served as a template and that the composer Masayoshi Soken was not even aware of the industrial band’s song when he composed the new version.
For comparison: Here is the song by Powerman 5000.
As for plagiarism accusations, these can be difficult to assess for an outsider. There have already been some complicated processes about this.
However, it does not seem that the similarities between the two songs are so striking that Square Enix would be taken to task. As one reddit user says: “Both songs are as similar as all songs in the genre resemble each other.”
