Critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy 14 has indefinitely suspended sales due to overly congested servers in the wake of launching its most recent expansion, the highly anticipated Endwalker.
While we already knew about the game’s servers being way over capacity, pulling the game from sale completely is a huge move on Square Enix’s part. This also extends to the regularly memed free trial.
Final Fantasy 14 has been suffering from congestion issues ever since Endwalker launched – if you tried to log in and were hit with an Error 2002 message, it quite literally meant an entire town was ahead of you in the queue. According to a recent blog post from Final Fantasy 14 boss Naoki Yoshida, the error has since been diagnosed as a residual bug from all the way back in 1.0.
We'd like to share an update from #FFXIV Producer & Director Naoki Yoshida on the ongoing congestion, additional game time compensation, suspension of sales, error codes, and our upcoming plans. https://t.co/3WcXX6eVkf
— FINAL FANTASY XIV (@FF_XIV_EN) December 16, 2021
Square Enix had already promised seven days of free game time to anyone affected by the situation, but now the developer is offering an additional 14 days on top of that, making for a total of 21. As stated above, it has also had to go a step further by taking the game off sale completely.
On top of digital sales suspensions, Square Enix is halting deliveries to brick-and-mortar retailers and putting the vast majority of planned advertisements on hold. The window for this initiative is currently labeled with a fairly nebulous use of the word ‘temporary’, meaning it’s unknown how long these measures will be in place.
Weirdly enough, this isn’t a first for the widely lauded MMO. Back in July, IGN reported that Final Fantasy 14 had been pulled from digital sale for similar reasons – the game was just too popular. Due to congestion across every available server, anyone who purchased a digital copy simply would not be able to sign in. This is also the case this time around, although it’s developed further in that current free trial holders are only allowed to play during off-peak times in order to prioritize anyone with an active subscription.
Yoshida-san’s update also addresses progress on the construction of new data centers to increase server capacity. Due to the combination of the pandemic and ongoing chip shortage, efforts to find a solution for congestion have met great resistance. Square Enix plans to reveal more concrete information as part of a roadmap tentatively scheduled for Jan. 2022.
Despite frustration, none of this has hurt Endwalker’s standing among fans. It has the highest Metacritic user score of any game that came out in 2021, while Final Fantasy 14 was named Best Ongoing Game at The Game Awards this year.
Finally, Yoshida-san has stated that the Final Fantasy 14 team still intends to launch patch 6.05 on its scheduled release date of Jan. 4, 2022, “as long as there are no major issues.”
If you were lucky enough to get in, be sure to check out our guides to every Aether Current and Sightseeing Log location in Endwalker. Otherwise, you’ll probably be able to find something to tide you over from our list of the best RPGs of all time.
Written by Cian Maher on behalf of GLHF.
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