5 Times Gamers Fought The Developer And Won

2. Rebuilding and Rebranding - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy franchise – which turns 40 years old in 2027 – is arguably the most popular RPG series of all time. Because there have been over three dozen games under the umbrella when considering primary entries, sequels, spin-offs, remakes and the like, there have obviously been some that haven’t been up to snuff.

For instance, a quick glance at Metacritic reveals that Final Fantasy: All the Bravest, Final Fantasy VII: The First Solider, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, and A King’s Tale: Final Fantasy XV are rated extremely low. As for mainline titles, fans understandably have a plethora of gripes with the second, thirteenth, and fifteenth entries.

That said, few – if any – of them were ever met with as much contempt as Final Fantasy XIV was when it premiered in 2010.

Given the critical and commercial victories of SquareSoft’s first attempt at a Final Fantasy MMORPG – 2002’s Final Fantasy XI – before returning to the series’ single-player roots for the next two titles, it made sense for them to aim for a second success with Final Fantasy XIV. Yet, developer Square Enix instead received absolute vitriol when the vanilla version of the game arrived on Windows platforms.

It’s hard to fault fans for being so upset when they had to deal with problems inside and outside of the gameworld.

In particular, server crashes were rampant; the user interface hindered the gameplay and graphics; user accounts were inexplicably deleted; and the misguided Fatigue System penalized devoted players by reducing EXP and skill points if they played for too long. 

Honestly, that’s just scratching the surface of what was wrong, and the overall consensus from critics and consumers alike was that Final Fantasy XIV was only half-baked when it came out of the oven.

Naturally, its failure affected Square Enix in astronomical ways.

Chiefly, some project staff were swapped – namely, original director/designer Nobuaki Komoto and producer Hiromichi Tanaka were replaced by Naoki Yoshida – as fiscal expectations dropped by 90% and the planned PlayStation 3 version being delayed. 

Perhaps most damaging, however, was the fact that countless players canceled their subscriptions – and lost faith in the franchise as a whole – prior to the serves being shut down in late 2012.

At the 2011 Tokyo Game Show, then-CEO Yoichi Wada admitted that “the Final Fantasy brand has been greatly damaged” by the situation. He then vowed: “We'll continue with our reform work, which basically amounts to fully redoing the game, and hope to revive the FFXIV that should have been released.”

To his credit, the development team tried mending the existing version of Final Fantasy XIV throughout 2011, but various factors – including a devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the Tōhoku region of Japan – made it difficult.

So, they decided to officially say goodbye to version 1.0 via an epic CG cutscene and rebuild the game from scratch, with a new engine and reworked interfaces, mechanics, combat, and storylines implemented at the prospect of regaining people’s trust and restoring the company’s reputation.

In one of the most impressive and heartwarming turnarounds in video games history, the second iteration of Final Fantasy XIV – known as A Realm Reborn – released in August of 2013 on Windows platforms and, poetically enough, on PlayStation 3.

Fortunately, it soon brought back many franchise followers and allowed 2014 to be a profitable year for Square Enix. Despite still having some reservations and criticisms, publications such as GameSpot, GamesRadar+, IGN, Polygon, and Famitsu praised its beneficial changes and Square Enix’s commitment to doing right by their fans.

Since then, Final Fantasy XIV has gotten numerous patches and expansions to keep the expanded playerbase – now with Xbox and macOS users among them – active and satisfied. In total, it’s been showered with accolades, too, and appeared on several Game of the Year lists.

Tens of thousands of players still jump in daily, so it remains incredibly popular, and it’s even been called one of the greatest MMORPGs ever made and one of the best Final Fantasy games of all time.