Final Fantasy XIV Mobile shuts down in China and effectively ends Global hopes

I have always been a big fan of MMORPGs, and inside that, Final Fantasy XIV. I also think games like Albion Online and RuneScape show you can successfully get these massive games on mobile. So, I was excited to try out Final Fantasy XIV Mobile when it eventually emerged from China. And yet...

It appears that Square has Enixed it up, as the Chinese version, the only country it was in, has closed down. The perspective Global version wasn’t mentioned by name in the Service Termination Announcement, but the fact that Square and the developers Lightspeed Studios, or parent Tencent, have terminated the Licensing Agreement means this whole thing seems dead in the water.

And to be fair to Square for once, I don’t blame them this time. I will still take my shots, though. Instead, I would place the blame and the bane of mobile gaming: monetisation. I am in the United Kingdom, so I never played it, but I did read about it a lot. And boy, was it a mess. 

One of the key features of FFXIV is the market board for player-to-player trading. Lightspeed slapped a paywall on that under the guise of preventing real money traders, so you had to have a cumulative top-up of $5. Then you had the battle pass, paying for dyes, skips to get good gear. Basically, anything they could monetise, they did.

And you might be thinking “Yeah, but regular FFXIV costs a monthly subscription,” if we ignore the copy-paste free trial stuff. You would be right to say that, but what you also get is the entire FFXIV journey. Final Fantasy XIV Mobile only offered A Realm Reborn. Which, whilst I enjoy it, can be boring.

So you are fighting a battle of not having as much content as the main game, and trying to turn a profit on a free game. Nobody wants to play a stripped-bare version if you are going to slap a price tag on anything and everything. Maybe the whole venture was doomed from the start. 

Or, maybe you don’t license your games to a company that focuses on the Chinese player base. Mobile games are a huge market over there; eye-watering sums of money pass through Gachas and the like. Of course, Tencent is going to try to wring as much money out of it as they can. 

Square Enix is notoriously bad in the mobile market; I am pretty sure they are down to just one live service game now. Final Fantasy XIV Mobile could work if they did it right. Cross-progression is king. Warframe does it; their mobile version is doing well. Try again, Square, but be smart this time.