Famous Twitch streamer, Jaryd Lazar, better known by his online alias “Summit1G”, had his Final Fantasy 14 subscription run out at what could very well be the worst possible time.
Final Fantasy 14 is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, or MMORPG for short, that requires players to pay a monthly subscription fee. This is typical for the MMORPG genre and can be found in similar games, such as World of Warcraft. Should a player run out of paid game time, they will no longer be able to play the game until they renew their subscription. A Final Fantasy 14 subscription costs $12.99 USD per month.
While streaming an eight-person raid, which is some of the hardest, most time-consuming content in the title, Summit1G‘s game came to a crashing halt after he was hit with a “Connection with the server was lost” error message. After exclaiming his disbelief, Summit1G comes to the realization that he likely ran out of game time on his subscription, which would no longer allow him to play the game. Shortly after, another error message pops on-screen, which confirms this to be true. Summit1G looked visibly frustrated as he lost his progress and left his raid group short one player.
Final Fantasy 14 has slowly built itself up after a disastrous launch in 2010, which ended with the game being shut down in 2012. Square Enix assigned a new producer to the game, Naoki Yoshida, who led the relaunch in 2013. The new version, known as A Realm Reborn, was met with critical acclaim. Since then, the team has released three successful major expansions to the game: Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers. A fourth one, Endwalker, is set to come out this year on November 23, 2021, and conclude the current story arc.
The game’s continued support has led to the title now being the MMORPG with the highest active player count, surpassing the juggernaut World of Warcraft, which has held the title since its release in 2004. Final Fantasy 14’s estimated active player is said to be nearly 2.49 million active players, with over 20 million players accumulated over its lengthy lifetime.
Recently, many popular streamers, such as Summit1G and Asmongold, have started streaming the game, further boosting its popularity. The game has become so popular over recent months that Square Enix had to stop selling the digital version of the game for some time as the servers were being overloaded.
With many games such as Fortnite and Warzone going the free-to-play route by using micro-transactions for monetization, it will be interesting to see how successful subscription-based games will be in the future. Regardless, players will just to remember to renew their game time before they run out like Summit1G did.
Final Fantasy 14 is available now for PC, PS4, and PS5.
Source: Summit1G/Twitch