Square Enix has made the decision to halt sales of Final Fantasy XIV in both Starter and Complete editions. The decision was made in hopes of mitigating server congestion issues since the release of the Endwalker expansion.
Final Fantasy XIV has been congested ever since the release of the recent Endwalker expansion. Square Enix had anticipated server congestion from the beginning, but it’s unclear if they expected it to the degree that we’ve seen.
In a recent post on the game’s official blog, Producer and Director of Final Fantasy XIV Naoki Yoshida explained the recent issues and their steps towards addressing them; his post included information about halting sales of the game.
■ Suspending Delivery of Package Versions and Temporary Suspension of Digital Version Sales
Players are currently experiencing extremely long wait times due to the dense concentration of play hours which far exceed our server capacity, especially during the peak times, and so we have decided to temporarily suspend the sale and delivery of FINAL FANTASY XIV Starter Edition and Complete Edition. Additionally, although those with an active subscription are prioritized to log in, Free Trial players are unable to log in outside of late night and early morning hours, and so we will also temporarily suspend new registrations for the Free Trial.
These temporary suspensions will be phased in over the next few days as we work with our retail partners. We will be coordinating with them as swiftly as possible, but please bear in mind that this will be a gradual process.
We will also be suspending all new advertisements. However, it will not be possible to suspend some of the advertisements due to the nature of how they were set up. We appreciate your patience and understanding regarding this matter.
Expansion packs and Collector’s Edition digital upgrades will continue to be available for existing players so that they may upgrade as needed.
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.
Note that new users are also unable to create free trial accounts during this period.
No end date for these new policies has been announced at the time of publishing, thus preventing new users from joining Final Fantasy XIV for the foreseeable future.
