To the one person that questioned why Final Fantasy XIV took home the best ongoing game award last week during the Video Game Awards, here is the reason why. With the release of the game’s latest expansion, Square Enix has suspended sales of the game due to server congestion which it has been dealing with since early December. This includes sales of the game itself, as well as the ability to register for free trials.
Players have experienced trouble logging into the game’s servers since the release of the new expansion, Endwalker, which launched on December 3rd after a short delay. Two weeks later, although the company has acknowledged they are working on the issue, a made some strides in fixing it, this server congestion is still an issue.
The company has now suspended both the Starter Edition and the Complete Edition from the sale, in an attempt to allow players that have already joined to finish the content, hoping their numbers will taper off after. Previously it was stated that Paid members would get preferential cueing to get into servers, which is not really surprising or unwarranted, but since even the paid members are having issues logging in it makes sense to completely suspend free trial registration.
This suspension in sales will start appearing across multiple storefronts in the next few days. However, Square Enix will continue to sell the expansions to the game, as well as the digital collector’s edition upgrade. Naoki Yoshida, the Producer, and Director of Final Fantasy XIV released a statement apologizing to fans:
To those who have been invited by their friends and family who have been considering joining, as well as our retail partners, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and ask for your understanding and cooperation in order to reduce congestion. We will continue to monitor the situation as we consider the timing around resuming sales.
As an apology to paid players, the company offered free play time to make up for these issues. As these issues persist, Square Enix has increased this time from the offered seven days to 21 days, which is an additional two weeks’ worth of playtime. It is important to note that this is the second time this year that the game’s userbase expanded to the point of suspending sales, as this similarly happened over the summer.
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