Final Fantasy 14 will go back on sale at the end of January

Final Fantasy XIV will be available to buy again on January 25, more than a month after it was pulled from sale.

Square Enix removed the game from digital stores in mid-December as it continued to struggle with server issues.

Now, in a new blog post on the game’s website, director and producer Naoki Yoshida confirmed that it would be returning on January 25.

Yoshida explained that Square Enix will be opening a new data centre for the Oceania region on January 25, with five separate worlds, saying “there should be more than enough room for everyone in Oceania to transfer over”.

The Home World Transfer service, which lets players move over to a different world, will then resume on January 26, allowing players to move to a new home world, “with the exception of transfers to certain congested worlds”.

Square Enix is also expanding the game’s Japanese data centre, adding a fourth logical data centre which will increase the game’s capacity by 50,000 players.

North American and European data centres will be expanded in two phases – the first in summer 2022 and the second in summer 2023. Yoshida says the global semiconductor shortage means it’s taking longer for server equipment to be delivered.

Taking all this account, Yoshida says, this will allow Square Enix to start selling the game again on digital stores from January 25. However, Yoshida warns that the game may be pulled again if the servers continue to struggle.

“In the event servers continue to experience extreme levels of congestion, we may consider suspending digital sales again,” he said.

“We are aware that certain Worlds are experiencing high server traffic at peak times, and while some may consider this decision to resume sales to be premature, we ask for your understanding in this matter.”

Further reading

Final Fantasy XVI producer says development has been delayed ‘almost half a year’

Due to “complications stemming from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic”

The problems have stemmed from the release of Final Fantasy XIV‘s Endwalker expansion, which was released on December 7, 2021. Even before its release date, the game’s servers were already starting to reach their limits because players who pre-ordered had early access to the expansion.

In November Yoshida, who was visibly upset and at one point moved to tears, confirmed during a livestream that Endwalker had been delayed by two weeks, from its originally planned November 23 release to December 7.

The producer stated that the short delay was so that the development team could make final adjustments and refinements before launch.