Calling the relaunch of Final Fantasy 14 wildly successful might be underselling it. As of April 2021, Square Enix reported over 22 million registered users of the popular MMORPG. That’s almost twice what World of Warcraft saw during its peak popularity in 2010.
It’s no surprise when such a popular game goes out of stock from physical retailers. However, Final Fantasy 14 even managed to sell out of digital downloads. Reddit user Polydopamine brought this to light when they posted a screenshot listing the PC download of Final Fantasy 14 as out of stock, and also showing that new character creation was unavailable due to server congestion. YouTuber Skill Up later shared the Reddit post on Twitter.
Naturally, this begs the question of how Square Enix runs out of digital downloads. After all, one of the benefits of digital distribution is the theoretically infinite number of copies. There are two possible explanations for this event, the first being that Square Enix limited sales of Final Fantasy 14 to cut down on server congestion. However, a more likely answer is that sales exceeded the number of available serial numbers.
Anyone who has ever downloaded a game before is probably familiar with CD keys, alphanumerical codes that unlock a digital game. Players may or may not have to enter the code depending on the game, seller, and platform, but it always exists. And while there are millions of possible combinations, there is still a hard limit on how many CD keys publishers can generate for a single game. It’s also unlucky that Square Enix bothered to generate every possible combination in advance.
The good news is that such issues are easily resolved by simply generating additional keys. In fact, Final Fantasy 14 Online Complete Edition, the version from Polydopamine’s Reddit post, is already back in stock. The server congestion also isn’t as bad as it appears. Unlike other MMOs, such as World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14 does not let players log in immediately when another player logs out. Instead, the game sorts queued players into groups that the system allows in all at once, so the length of a queue doesn’t necessarily correspond to the number of players currently logged in.
Either way, it is definitely a good problem to have from Square Enix’s perspective. As several commenters pointed out, the game is currently between major updates. Typically, one would expect to see a noticeable lull in the number of new subscribers. The fact that codes are selling out during such a time suggests the relaunched Final Fantasy 14 may continue its impressive growth for some time.
Final Fantasy 14 is available on PC, PS4, and PS5.