Link to the reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/wmzf4y/ukraine_subscription_problems/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
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It's not the world's fault yalls currency Values are so volatile.. 1 year free game time? The fuck? If they get it I want it. Lol
I really hope they see this and implement a proper, full-scale solution for regional pricing.
You got more to worry about then a ff sub tbh. I kno you play ff to escape from your situation but ff will be here when things get better.
let us know if you plan to pool money for subs
Here's the shitty truth of things. 440 in Ukraine is roughly $12 US. Welcome to the world of a global economy.
Cries in Asia, no steam version so no regional pricing
If I move from America to Romania, can I transfer my character from an American server to a EU data center?
They should just make FFXIV free for residents in Ukraine for the time being. Give gamers a chance to detach from reality. I can’t imagine it affecting their downline much.
just make free trial.
I love how there is a real world problem and the result is asking for a discount to play a video game.
I think SE should have special policies, plans and benefits for some countries such as: Ukraine, Vietnam, Brazil and some poor/developing countries.
In my country Vietnam, the price of SE's games can be even higher than many developed countries such as: The US, UK, Canada, ect. And that's making no sense at all… (when other publishers on Steam and other platforms can have reduced price for games and products for my country).
Wow, I feel this. I actually fall on a hard time now I sold my ps4 and currently starting from scratch on a PC with Free Trial. Even if I rebuy the game, I don’t think I can afford to constantly buy sub. My hope is by the time I complete and reexperience everything I can on a free trial , my condition is better. I don’t know whether that’ll happen though.
But cannot you just go to eu site and buy game from there/game time, coz eu is cheapest altest for me for someone from SEA. I mostly buy gametime from great britain version of eu coz thats cheapest for me, its like 20-30% cheaper for me to buy game time from en-gb site than eu. I cant do sub coz credit cards from my country have stopped autodebit.
But yea the cost of game is huge, i played 3 months on trial and was waiting for discount to buy the game luckily it hit right in time.
I would absolutely be all for this. I just don’t know how they would implement it as SE goes by region, but maybe and hopefully there is something they could change.
I can actually relate to this, living in Myanmar and at first our inflation price since the sanctions made it hard to sub ingame where I found meaningful friends and the love of my life. Now my government has made it so we cannot complete transactions over seas, or transfer a sum to a relative so I could pay for my subs. Currently relying on my kind friends overseas to pay for subs but knowing myself, I already feel guilty about it.
I just save up and buy a few months all at once when a new big patch comes around, no reason to sub during downtime of patchs
Playing from Myanmar here, and we've been paying triple the sub prices for awhile now as there's also a war going on here. But as you said this is an escape from this cruel reality and i love this game so much. I can totally relate to this…but Ukraine is not the only country going through this, in fact theres alot of countries with economic crisis so if Square gives favor to Ukraine, it wouldnt be that fair towards the others…
Damn that sucks i get the feeling , your life feels shitty, and your mmo is your happy place
as a side note, I think at this point the housing timer should be extended to at least a few months instead of just 45 days
Elections have consequences, communism is here to destroy freedom.
This isn't the responsibility of Square Enix.
The dollar is going to collapse, I will not be surprised when the subscription fee is hundreds of USD a month.
This is worth it, right?
No more mean tweets from Trump.
Wait. If you buy from Mog Station is the price there higher than normal? That he means in the post?
I did some math and wrote a long post, but It keeps being removed so here is the summary:
For minimum wage workers in Ukraine, it currently costs about 6.3% of their gross monthly income to pay the FF14 sub fee. The poorest Americans at federal minimum wage pay about 1.3% to play.
That's putting aside all the taxes. So those cost percentages are technically much higher when you only consider what's left after taxes are paid.
to the argument that "you now have worries more important than games" I will answer that life goes on and this war has been going on for half a year. I want to LIVE further and at least for a couple of hours forget about what is happening around and spend time with friends
If they allowed pc accounts to be interchangeable between steam and SE store, they could possibly help people with regional pricing at least since Steam does regional pricing unlike SE store.
Hello im author of post in the video , i saw many comments telling that price for sub in their country is too high too. And i totaly agree that Sqere Enix need to react to this problem and make regional based pricing which depends on average income in country. It will definetely increase the amount of players from all over the world since many people prefer other mmos which are f2p or have a cheaper subscription.
The reason why i started talking about my country in general is because everything is happening too fast and people cant adapt to it, our economic will loose 50% till the end of the year so its only just started and i want to make something before its not too late. I used to pay sub by wasting my scholarship from university (which was 40Euros at that time) which im not recieving right now and i also lost my job, im lucky enough to have a family members that still have their jobs and i cant imagine how hard it is to people who live alone and dont have anyone to help them if something like this happens.
why is the dislike ratio so high on this one? so many russians watching or what is it?
2-3 days work to pay a sub lmao maybe move somewhere else get a better job
I'm in Ukraine, but I work from home on my computer. All the money I make comes from the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Japan. It all goes into my US bank account, so I don't have the payment problem. I've been in the author's shoes though. Many times when I've been playing, missiles were dropping around me. Some were landing within half a mile. Those fvckers are loud and send me to the floor, then the bathroom. Sheite is real here.
It's at the point I can tell the difference in explosions. Extremely loud are missiles landing close. Loudest sound you ever heard. Loud ones are farther away, obviously. A loud crack is a missile being shot out of the sky. A softer crack is a drone. Soft pops are missile defense firing off.
To explain just how loud missile strikes are, I was woken up around 2 am to loud explosions. When I checked on them in the morning, the explosions were twelve to fifteen miles away. I had to guestimate the distance on Google Maps.
It makes little sense to use local currencies to avoid the devaluation problem, if servers, electricity and servicing still need to be paid for in hard currencies. It would not be economically viable. So it makes more sense to push for a dedicated support programme for Ukraine.
What most of us play is the version of the game for the upper income, monthly subscription world. Square also has solutions for markets where things are very different, like China and Korea. Those are run by local companies, with local servers and very different pricing … in local currencies.
SE can not run its servers at half-price. Certainly not now that the entire company basically depends on FFXIV for its survival.
Maybe they can similarly create separate servers and services for more countries, but that seems a large effort for anything smaller than the Chinese market, or anything less lucrative than the Korean one.
So I suspect that the only realistic solution is direct temporary assistance for Ukrainian gamers.
tbh not just Ukraine, some countries who got hit by high inflation also must pay more in subs,
I guess square Enix need to make regional price for some country
mine pay more like 20%~30% since Inflation keeps soaring, I am already concern about this, did square Enix will do something about this or not
but some platforms did notice this, like discord, they make the regional price on my region
which cheaper than we should pay
square enix is sucks in terms of regional pricing in general and esp with ffxiv sub fees. in turkey(and in a lot of other countries too) i have to pay almost a AAA game worth of money every month to play xiv.
i hope they allow sub fees from steam or introduce regional pricing for their site. or at least make a discount for ukranian people for the time being. not being able to participate in your favorite hobby in times of major distress deals major blow to your mental on top of everything
I know it's not that easy, but that feels like the perfect opportunity to subsidize the Subscription Costs, either by SE directly or via Donations. Call it "You DO pay my Sub"
Speaking of, is there ways to sponsor ukrainians in subs until they do add the regional currancies.Cause I'd be more then glad to, but I want to make sure it's actually going to the people
Servers are expensive I know a guy that owns a website pretty small scale maybe 10k users daily it costs 6k for him a month in bandwidth alone. Plus having to cover the expenses when it's not busy and not making money.
Oh well not bothered about your country turning into a third world country, oh wait it was already 🤣🤣🤣🤣 go Putin
War is a horrible thing, it affects the lives and the economy any war-torn country. While I really feel for those affected by the war in Ukraine. Is the main issue here about the war or the financial budget to afford the sub?
IMO, FFXIV (or any games) is a considered a QoL thing, not a necessity for survival. When a person is praying that a missile does not hit their house or has not had food/water for days, the first and last thing on their mind is not the FFXIV sub, but to staying alive.
Yes, some countries are may not be at war at the scale of Ukraine, but they are having really really really bad economy situations too. Some might argue that, "Your country is not at war but mine is" or "I have missiles flying over my head, yours is a bad politician you voted for, vote smarter next time". No, it does not work this way in case you were wondering.
SE is not obligated (per se) to fix or help the economy of any country (or person). If SE were to go down this road, what about players from other countries with economy problems (Venezuela, Brazil, Sri Lanka and many more)? Does SE need to setup an economy division to monitor which country can or cannot afford the sub? How and where do you find a balance for this issue? Where do you start and where do you stop?
//With this logic, I have a potato PC, it does not have a dedicated graphic card, it wont run FFXIV, I cannot afford good computer, I cannot afford food. Should SE start making FFXIV to run on all potato PCs or send me food or maybe both?
It is not impossible for SE to help, it is gonna be very very tricky and tough to balance.
P.S. Another PoV of Bettlenet doing localized currencies is that they don't wanna lose any business from that, they want it all, they want to make every penny no matter how little it may be.
From the Philippines here. As a middle-wage worker, the sub fee is like…1/6 of my monthly wage. When I bought Endwalker, I had to stop subbing for 4 months to recover.
and? People want special treatment because something is going on or they can't afford it. Hello! this is the real world! For crying out loud people need to get their damn priorities straightened out
this is a real problem in ukraine, how to play ff14 lol.. i think people have more important problems, how to get their heads out and survive….
Wow imagine prioritising a video game over food and shelter during a war. People really are backwards!
I really wish regional pricing was the default for more games/stores in general. While my currency doesn't have as high of an exchange rate, it's still incredibly frustrating at times having to pay much higher costs for something (especially when the usual currencies used are dollars, euro and gbp which all tend to be pretty high). Sometimes I have experienced regional pricing being higher than non-regional too though (Eshop is especially annoying with this in my country), but generally I think regional pricing is often a better choice.