It's not a good sign for Luminous Productions' Forspoken, as several SteelBooks have been found in the trash. Forspoken has been receiving a lot of negative reviews ever since it was released on January 24, 2023. From people criticizing the voice acting, the choice of dialogue, the game's plot, and even a few gameplay mechanics, the game hasn't really found a place in many modern gamers' libraries despite having good opening sales.For those unfamiliar, Forspoken is an action role-playing game developed by Luminous Productions and published by Square Enix. Expectations for the title were high since the group working on it used to also work on Final Fantasy 15. It was developed to take advantage of the PlayStation 5's graphical capabilities, so a lot of fans were really hyped up for its release. Unfortunately, various issues plagued the game, and it fell short of what was originally anticipated. Now, another piece of disheartening news does not bode well for Forspoken. Twitter user maiacelio shared a video in which a number of Forspoken SteelBooks had been found in the garbage. While it was not disclosed where precisely the items were found, it is still surprising to see such a new game treated this way. Seeing merchandise such as this show up in disposal bins and dumpsters isn't quite new. In similar news, Funko is disposing of $36 million worth of figurines following lackluster sales in 2022. While that product line seems to be dealing with more volume than Forspoken, the fact that this video game has only been out for a couple of months really doesn't seem like a good sign.
While avid collectors place a lot of value on PlayStation 5 SteelBooks, the added cost versus the regular packaging of the game could really affect the decision-making when buying items such as these. Understandably, while most SteelBook editions include other additional freebies or content, most consumers will tend to focus on purchasing games which they hold to a higher regard. In line with Forspoken's mixed reviews and continuous criticisms, it seems the trend for the game is downward. While it wasn't confirmed whether the steel cases had the discs inside, just seeing them thrown out for disposal does put a more negative light on the game.
This also falls in line with recent news of Luminous Productions merging with Square Enix. With such negative results from this project alone, perhaps Square Enix could be pulling the plug on not just the studio, but also the whole project and IP in general. If the game's stock is slow-moving, then the easiest way to dispose of the stock is via a landfill.
Forspoken is available now for PC and PS5.