Final Fantasy XIV users will need to renew membership to keep playing

Square-Enix just sent a message to Final Fantasy XIV players who still have accounts in the system. As you may recall, the game has been free-to-play since shortly after its launch, which Square-Enix has admitted didn't go as planned. The company is hard at work on a substantial revamp and the game has been free to play for quite some time as a result, but that is ending as work on the revamp continues. Today, Square-Enix outlined the process.

Square-Enix just sent a message to Final Fantasy XIV players who still have accounts in the system. As you may recall, the game has been free-to-play since shortly after its launch, which Square-Enix has admitted didn't go as planned. The company is hard at work on a substantial revamp and the game has been free to play for quite some time as a result, but that is ending as work on the revamp continues. Today, Square-Enix outlined the process.

Rather than paraphrase everything, I figure it's best to quote directly. Here's the bulk of today's email, sent moments ago:

As a valued FINAL FANTASY XIV customer, we are grateful as always for your ongoing support and dedication.

In addition to our recent announcement on the upcoming release of FINAL FANTASY XIV Version 2.0, we also revealed our plans to start the recurring billing options. Below are further details regarding recurring billing.

The recurring billing will be effective starting January 6th, 2012.
In order to ensure that no one is charged without prior consent, we have decided to suspend all FINAL FANTASY XIV service accounts on January 5th, 2012.
If you wish to continue playing FINAL FANTASY XIV, we ask that you renew and set up your payment method options starting December 16th, 2011.

The email also included a link to a site where users can learn more about setting up recurring billing. That link is included at the end of this article.

Frankly, the process outlined above is exactly what I hoped to see the company do. I have an account in the game and I would have hated to forget about the activation date and then find a charge on my account at an inopportune moment. It's good to know that won't be an issue.

Hopefully, Final Fantasy XIV will come out of the overall process a better game, but in the meantime I have plenty of stuff to do with my time and I won't be renewing. What are your plans?

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Staff article by Jason Venter (December 05, 2011) Jason Venter has been playing games for 30 years, since discovering the Apple IIe version of Mario Bros. in his elementary school days. Now he writes about them, here at HonestGamers and also at other sites that agree to pay him for his words.