every time someone says "a chip shortage, or they can't find more servers".

i think of this. sorry that I could only find a clip in Spanish for the part I wanted. https://youtu.be/xxoEiKfjzlQ

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-...-shortage.html

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But in 2020 when the pandemic shocked the world, consumers were purchasing less of everything and, subsequently, tech companies stopped purchasing inventory. When the world kept spinning in a new virtual way, with many working from home, items such as laptops and other electronics became in extremely high demand. Personal computer sales grew by 11% in 2020—the highest growth for that technology in a decade.

This unexpected demand shocked many in the electronics business. No one was prepared for all that ensued in 2020, but the automotive industry was particularly affected by the shortage and continues to feel those consequences today. This, in part, stems from the decision to cease orders for microcontrollers and other chips early in the pandemic due to the prediction that consumers would not need or want to buy a car during that time. Coupled with these chips being used for cars as well as other technology—such as smartphones and laptops—the stock is simply not available at this time.

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https://marketrealist.com/p/when-wil...-shortage-end/

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Why is there a semiconductor shortage?
Like most of the other goods that are in short supply, the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the semiconductor shortage. A lot of chip plants were closed due to the pandemic. Chip demand also tumbled and many end-users cut their order projections with chipmakers. However, the demand rebounded much sharper than even the most optimistic observers would have envisioned.

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https://hbr.org/2021/02/why-were-in-...uctor-shortage

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To a great extent, the chip shortage has been a ticking time bomb, building since late last year due to a few (unrelated) supply-chain disruptions. When the Covid-19 pandemic caused a precipitous drop in vehicle sales in spring 2020, automakers cut their orders of all parts and materials — including the chips needed for functions ranging from touchscreen displays to collision-avoidance systems. Then in the third quarter, when demand for passenger vehicles rebounded, chip manufacturers were already committed to supplying their big customers in consumer electronics and IT.

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COVID 19 + lockdowns + closed facilities + continued lockdowns in some nations = very few semiconductors and chips = very few if any available servers.

No components = no servers.

When you shut down a huge slew of the industry that supplies the massive increase in demand for computer systems thanks to those same COVID 19 restrictions, dont be surprised when there is a huge backlog and shortage of the materials needed for said servers because said industries that MANUFACTURED those components have been closed for an extended period.

Mocking the shortage doesn't make it fictional nor go away ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyone that thinks SE would willingly throw away purchases and subs is, IMO, crazy.

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including the chips needed for functions ranging from touchscreen displays to collision-avoidance systems

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I want to highlight this point.

Know what TCAS is?

Its the system you put on aircraft so they dont meet by accident at 30000 feet at 650 mph. FF 14 servers are one thing, a non functioning TCAS on an airliner means it doesnt leave the ground.

Oh you COULD, I suppose...but theres no guarantee the plane, or its passengers, will ever reach their destination alive.

You don't seem very educated on the subject matter, TC.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Mocking the shortage doesn't make it fictional nor go away ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyone that thinks SE would willingly throw away purchases and subs is, IMO, crazy.

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TC reminds me of those uneducated ones that mocked COVID then proceeded to not wear masks or vaccinate then acted surprised when they got COVID.

Yep, it's all a giant conspiracy cooked up by Square Enix and every major news outlet in the globe. They're all in it together lying about a global components shortage affecting every industry from video-games to car production, and all just to ensure they don't have to pay a little extra for increased server capacity/support. ;-)
/s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E..._chip_shortage

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58230388

Do yourself a favour and do some reading. There's a whole big world out there besides gaming, and shockingly enough it can at times -affect- your gaming.

I think the best we can do right now, besides hope SE can come across some great stash in a basement, or Activision Blizzard shares :3, is make the queue more robust.

It sounds plausible a hiccup on the client side could cause the queue to toss all of it's coffee biscuits onto the ground, but that also sounds like something SE should be able to tighten up because hiccups are a thing that generally can be accounted for. Though, and this may be personal luck, 2002 has become rarer and rarer for myself- near launch days it was really common, but I think the last one I had was a few days ago.

If they had their own launcher or something I'd think they might be able to do something cute like "we're sorry but while we try to fix this issue we'll open up the catalog for some other games for you to play" (even maybe FFXI lol).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

I want to highlight this point.

Know what TCAS is?

Its the system you put on aircraft so they dont meet by accident at 30000 feet at 650 mph. FF 14 servers are one thing, a non functioning TCAS on an airliner means it doesnt leave the ground.

Oh you COULD, I suppose...but theres no guarantee the plane, or its passengers, will ever reach their destination alive.

---

https://c.tenor.com/VXS330J9qY0AAAAC...-challenge.gif

People would more readily accept the 'chip shortage' explanation if it hadn't been repeatedly demonstrated that a software oversight has been causing many of the most frustrating issues with the queue.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

People would more readily accept the 'chip shortage' explanation if it hadn't been repeatedly demonstrated that a software oversight has been causing many of the most frustrating issues with the queue.

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If thats accurate. Once persons findings arent exactly a great case study.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

If thats accurate. Once persons findings arent exactly a great case study.

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Even if you completely ignore the analytics, immediately closing the game client and logging you out is not an acceptable way to catch basic network errors in 2021.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

Even if you completely ignore the analytics, immediately closing the game client and logging you out is not an acceptable way to catch basic network errors in 2021.

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I agree it sucks, but the current year means nothing when talking about old network systems. You'd be surprised how cobbled together and shoddy most of NA internet infrastructure is.

Thing 8s yes 5here a shortage from 2018..but SE fucked up here as they have the time to upgrade. There was more players joining from ShB.to a point where they was need to stop sell the game. There was wait times the past year. Even in a shortages like this you can get parts in a year time. They just cost way more that normal.so that's why let's say Sony have a problem as they can't just buy it for more but sell a PS5 for the same price. So SE cheaper out here and we got what we got.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by leoxastaroth

Yep, it's all a giant conspiracy cooked up by Square Enix and every major news outlet in the globe. They're all in it together lying about a global components shortage affecting every industry from video-games to car production, and all just to ensure they don't have to pay a little extra for increased server capacity/support. ;-)
/s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E..._chip_shortage

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58230388

Do yourself a favour and do some reading. There's a whole big world out there besides gaming, and shockingly enough it can at times -affect- your gaming.

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There is a real shortages don't get me wrong. Thing is you ever stoped and think why there shortages? Some company's like Samsung,aplles and some in chains buy more that they need to be the only 9nes in the game.

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Originally Posted by SamsaraTrickstar

Thing 8s yes 5here a shortage from 2018..but SE fucked up here as they have the time to upgrade. There was more players joining from ShB.to a point where they was need to stop sell the game. There was wait times the past year. Even in a shortages like this you can get parts in a year time. They just cost way more that normal.so that's why let's say Sony have a problem as they can't just buy it for more but sell a PS5 for the same price. So SE cheaper out here and we got what we got.

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"stop selling the game for a running mmorpg that before this addons release ran perfectly fine everywhere except some few selected servers where a big streamer landet" i'm not sure if you have the slightest idea just how utterly crazy that idea is from a marketing perspective.

Chip shortage is one thing, but according to veterans on this forum and in game, SE has been told for years they needed more server and didn't get more. Yeah nobody could've predicted the current sitch but still. They kept selling more subs than the servers can literally handle.

Netflix for example, I think the sub cost is about the same per mo. Lets say they sold 3 Mil subscriptions, and you go to watch a movie, and are put in a 2 hour queue lol. Their response is "Oh... well yeah only 17,000 people can actually use the service at once. We were told years ago it'd be a problem but uh yeah, you know, uh, chip shortage now yeah."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DerpyWhiskers

Chip shortage is one thing, but according to veterans on this forum and in game, SE has been told for years they needed more server and didn't get more. Yeah nobody could've predicted the current sitch but still. They kept selling more subs than the servers can literally handle.

Netflix for example, I think the sub cost is about the same per mo. Lets say they sold 3 Mil subscriptions, and you go to watch a movie, and are put in a 2 hour queue lol. Their response is "Oh... well yeah only 17,000 people can actually use the service at once. We were told years ago it'd be a problem but uh yeah, you know, uh, chip shortage now yeah."

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They haven't needed "many more servers for years" They added servers when they needed them up until... wait for it... 2020....

They also just spent a fortune on the SEA DC which hasnt gone live yet due to... wait for it... Covid...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DerpyWhiskers

SE has been told for years they needed more server and didn't get more.

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But that's not true...they have, albeit slowly, upgraded their servers over the years, opened up new ones, new worlds, increased capacity. I've been with this game since ARR, I've been on the busiest server there is, I was there when you had to wait till 4 am to be able to just create your character before servers got upgraded, before new worlds were opened up.

I'm all for people being upset about not getting to play when they're paying a sub, I get it, but this random false rhetoric of "SE has always been dastardly greedy villains all along, they wanted this to happen, they didn't care, this is all their doing" is just so misguided from a logical perspective.

I've said it before I'll say it again; do you honestly think it's not in their most profitable interest to KEEP all those new extra subs they've gained? Do you not think they want to keep the hype and goodwill they've generated in the past 6 months? If you're willing to believe SE is so super greedy as to not upgrade to save money, you should be willing to believe they're so greedy they'll want to keep all the new people subbed for as long as possible, not letting them all unsub and go away due to not being able to play.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by leoxastaroth

But that's not true...they have, albeit slowly, upgraded their servers over the years, opened up new ones, new worlds, increased capacity. I've been with this game since ARR, I've been on the busiest server there is, I was there when you had to wait till 4 am to be able to just create your character before servers got upgraded, before new worlds were opened up.

I'm all for people being upset about not getting to play when they're paying a sub, I get it, but this random false rhetoric of "SE has always been dastardly greedy villains all along, they wanted this to happen, they didn't care, this is all their doing" is just so misguided from a logical perspective.

I've said it before I'll say it again; do you honestly think it's not in their most profitable interest to KEEP all those new extra subs they've gained? Do you not think they want to keep the hype and goodwill they've generated in the past 6 months? If you're willing to believe SE is so super greedy as to not upgrade to save money, you should be willing to believe they're so greedy they'll want to keep all the new people subbed for as long as possible, not letting them all unsub and go away due to not being able to play.

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I 100% believe that SE, like many companies across a plethora of products, kept as close to the margins as they possibly could to maximize profit. It’s shortsighted, but also common practice and understandable if you’re crunching the numbers. And they could and did upgrade servers and add stuff as needed, but only just.

Now that an unprecedented collection of situations has happened, SE and a lot of other companies didn’t have the materials or time to fix this particular problem. In the slower moving world of production, the shortage caught everyone off guard, so there was no chance of little server upgrades or additions when it became clear that it might be needed for EW

So I’d argue that yes, SE’s big sin is being greedy like all other companies, which is why many of them got hit so hard by the timing of this shortage. But getting angry at the dev team won’t fix it, acting like it isn’t real won’t fix it, cause it isn’t fixable rn. It’s a real conundrum.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by basilbc

So I’d argue that yes, SE’s big sin is being greedy like all other companies, which is why many of them got hit so hard by the timing of this shortage. But getting angry at the dev team won’t fix it, acting like it isn’t real won’t fix it, cause it isn’t fixable rn. It’s a real conundrum.

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I would argue that not spending more money than is necessary isn't greedy, it's just smart business. They stated they were willing to spend the money to upgrade once it became apparent it was necessary but the products weren't available. You don't overexpand before you know you can recoup the losses unless you want your company to fail. The situation sucks and a lot of people are having a bad time, but this isn't a "sin".

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

I would argue that not spending more money than is necessary isn't greedy, it's just smart business. They stated they were willing to spend the money to upgrade once it became apparent it was necessary but the products weren't available. You don't overexpand before you know you can recoup the losses unless you want your company to fail. The situation sucks and a lot of people are having a bad time, but this isn't a "sin".

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It’s a sarcastic turn of phrase, sorry for the confusion. but I do disagree that it isn’t greed, even if it’s understandable, reasonable, and heck, not a completely negative interpretation. Like I said, I don’t blame them for any of the choices they made up to this point, nobody saw 2020/2021 coming. But it is a consequence of businesses running the way they do that something can disrupt so much for such a long time.

Edit: I think we’re in agreement about the current situation, if that helps.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I agree it sucks, but the current year means nothing when talking about old network systems. You'd be surprised how cobbled together and shoddy most of NA internet infrastructure is.

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It's an extremely basic expectation to create systems of redundancy around networked features in modern software, all the more if you are trying to market your service in an area that may have imperfect networks. There is absolutely no valid excuse whatsoever for this game closing itself and frequently removing you from the queue when it drops a singular packet at the wrong time (It's also been widely demonstrated that it does this when no packets are dropped at all). Even if the developers feel it's necessary, it would only be necessary due to constraints created by incompetence somewhere in the long development of this game and its backend.

This isn't the 1980's. There is no reason for a program to terminate itself over such a basic and commonplace error.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

It's an extremely basic expectation to create systems of redundancy around networked features in modern software, all the more if you are trying to market your service in an area that may have imperfect networks. There is absolutely no valid excuse whatsoever for this game closing itself and frequently removing you from the queue when it drops a singular packet at the wrong time (It's also been widely demonstrated that it does this when no packets are dropped at all). Even if the developers feel it's necessary, it would only be necessary due to constraints created by incompetence somewhere in the long development of this game and its backend.

This isn't the 1980's. There is no reason for a program to terminate itself over such a basic and commonplace error.

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You seem to make it sound as though the issue is very simple to solve through the writing and changing some code. I'm not going to disagree with you because I have no clue about what goes into coding a game but I'll just ask this; if it's honestly such a simple thing to do for the devs, just a bit of code to write so that you keep your place in the queue, why do you think they wouldn't do that? Do you honestly believe the developers are just lazy/don't care about profit or public appearances?

And if you're saying; "Oh well they're incompetent and can't do this thing I am saying because they are bad at creating/improving a game" then again, where is the solution exactly? Should they hire new developers right now? Ask them to quickly tackle writing/changing code for a game they've never worked on? Is it an apology you'd want? Money back?

I mean surely you have to agree that they too -want- you to play their game, right?

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

People would more readily accept the 'chip shortage' explanation if it hadn't been repeatedly demonstrated that a software oversight has been causing many of the most frustrating issues with the queue.

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It wouldn't make much of a difference. My time in other mmos tells me this. Many players out there don't care why they can't log in. They only care that they can't. They could be told that the location of the servers is experiencing flooding from bad weather and they would rage at SE for not having enough back-up servers. Many people are blindly enraged by inconvenience even if there is a good reason for it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DerpyWhiskers

Chip shortage is one thing, but according to veterans on this forum and in game, SE has been told for years they needed more server and didn't get more. Yeah nobody could've predicted the current sitch but still. They kept selling more subs than the servers can literally handle.

Netflix for example, I think the sub cost is about the same per mo. Lets say they sold 3 Mil subscriptions, and you go to watch a movie, and are put in a 2 hour queue lol. Their response is "Oh... well yeah only 17,000 people can actually use the service at once. We were told years ago it'd be a problem but uh yeah, you know, uh, chip shortage now yeah."

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SE has been upgrading them to align with growth. It would be foolish to say that this wasn't an ongoing process as ff14 has constantly been growing. The issue is that a perfect storm of events all happened so quickly and close together.

No one could have predicted this.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by leoxastaroth

You seem to make it sound as though the issue is very simple to solve through the writing and changing some code. I'm not going to disagree with you because I have no clue about what goes into coding a game but I'll just ask this; if it's honestly such a simple thing to do for the devs, just a bit of code to write so that you keep your place in the queue, why do you think they wouldn't do that? Do you honestly believe the developers are just lazy/don't care about profit or public appearances?

And if you're saying; "Oh well they're incompetent and can't do this thing I am saying because they are bad at creating/improving a game" then again, where is the solution exactly? Should they hire new developers right now? Ask them to quickly tackle writing/changing code for a game they've never worked on? Is it an apology you'd want? Money back?

I mean surely you have to agree that they too -want- you to play their game, right?

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Stop, you can't say that! It'll force everyone to have to think more!

...

or they'll just ignore this and say something to the effect of "profit margins... greedy company... something something 'chip shortage my ass'... something something 'months to prepare..."

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Originally Posted by basilbc

But getting angry at the dev team won’t fix it, acting like it isn’t real won’t fix it, cause it isn’t fixable rn. It’s a real conundrum.

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I won't get angry at the dev team for these issues, because I know they care about the game. I'll get angry at the higher ups in SE's corporate ladder though, since it's doubtless been their final decision on how servers are maintained.

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Originally Posted by Tanis_Ebonhart

TC reminds me of those uneducated ones that mocked COVID then proceeded to not wear masks or vaccinate then acted surprised when they got COVID.

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I promise you there's a very strong overlap between those people and the people who think the superconductor shortage is a hoax being perpetuated because Square... wants... people to tell their friends not to jump aboard their currently white-hot MMO due to login queues for... reasons.

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Originally Posted by tuckerpb2

i think of this. sorry that I could only find a clip in Spanish for the part I wanted. https://youtu.be/xxoEiKfjzlQ

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Haven't seen a forum massacre this bad in a long time. Dude posted this without even trying to learn about the situation first. Hope you're ok, stay safe.

God forbid they rent servers from 3rd party. That would force their techincians to work once they would have to migrate people from rented machines to their own in 2025+. But hey we have like 15 servers on europe and 2x that for japan, big logistics.

Eating potato chips . Today only 658 queue at 6.55pm. Don't even need to use remote access.

Now where is my Core i9-12900K? Even those DDR5 on sale are overpriced and uses crappy chips. The shortage is real.

Give it a few months. They will sort it out.

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Originally Posted by Lenivy

God forbid they rent servers from 3rd party. That would force their techincians to work once they would have to migrate people from rented machines to their own in 2025+. But hey we have like 15 servers on europe and 2x that for japan, big logistics.

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Getting a machine to work as a FFXIV server is not like setting up a minecraft server on a random Dell Inspiron. It takes extremely specific hardware.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lenivy

God forbid they rent servers from 3rd party. That would force their techincians to work once they would have to migrate people from rented machines to their own in 2025+. But hey we have like 15 servers on europe and 2x that for japan, big logistics.

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The continued smug insistence at the idea that people who do this for a living and work in one of the most tech-forward countries in the world would simply overlook or dismiss temporarily renting server space if it was feasible is maddening.

If it was as easy as "just rent some server space" I'm reasonably sure this would have been implemented months ago in preperation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tuckerpb2

i think of this. sorry that I could only find a clip in Spanish for the part I wanted. https://youtu.be/xxoEiKfjzlQ

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When people deny that it's the issue it makes me think of Flat-Earthers.

You can tell them the reality, you can provide them with the evidence to back it up but because it doesn't fit their world view, everybody else is lying and cannot accept the truth.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lenivy

God forbid they rent servers from 3rd party. That would force their techincians to work once they would have to migrate people from rented machines to their own in 2025+. But hey we have like 15 servers on europe and 2x that for japan, big logistics.

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There's a fair chance they have specific hardware requirements and require a bespoke solution and control over their whole infrastructure. It's a huge load it has to handle whilst maintaining high performance and low ping. I expect they probably do a fair bit to optimise their own servers to this effect, which is the advantage of having control over your own infrastructure.

There's no guarantee third parties will be able to meet their specific needs. Just like buying any old server might not either. Rented server spaces have their use, but hosting a hugely, hugely popular MMORPG I feel like is something that would require its own infrastructure and not a borrowed one.

As for the number of servers between EU and JP, remember that JP servers don't just house JP players, because for many other countries the ping will be better connecting to a JP servers. Speaking as an EU player on a US server, the ping does make a difference (EG: I had to compensate for it in Titan Savage due to the tightness of some mechanics). So it's not like say, somebody in Taiwan is gonna connect to a US datacenter when Japan is a lot closer. And Japan itself is a very densely populated country that probably has a pretty huge FFXIV following.

And until recently, the EU likely was fine for server space. Somebody suggested before that when more EU servers were added that people complain about how long Duty Finder queues were, so there is a disadvantage to having too many servers. So I would suspect JP has the number of servers to match their population else I suspect they'd run into low population complaints.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

And until recently, the EU likely was fine for server space. Somebody suggested before that when more EU servers were added that people complain about how long Duty Finder queues were, so there is a disadvantage to having too many servers. So I would suspect JP has the number of servers to match their population else I suspect they'd run into low population complaints.

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NA and EU Worlds haven't been fine since Shadowbringers launch.

There are several people tracking the active characters on the lodestone. In these benchmarks, EU and NA have been at over 20k active characters per world since June 2019. In June 2020 they were at 22-24k. All while japanese servers were at 11k per World. JP just has vastly more worlds per DC and per active player. (let's leave the housing implications per world out for now)

Population grew slowly but steadily and servers have been full. They just didn't do anything and had no plans to do so until post Endwalker launch. It's a massive failure on their planning and managment department since they cheapened out to future proof anything.

Leave my multibillion dollar corporation alone RIGHT NOW

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

The continued smug insistence at the idea that people who do this for a living and work in one of the most tech-forward countries in the world would simply overlook or dismiss temporarily renting server space if it was feasible is maddening.

If it was as easy as "just rent some server space" I'm reasonably sure this would have been implemented months ago in preperation.

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It's a mitigation method.

It also isn't unusual for businesses to seek profit even at the cost of sustainability. It's been an issue for a while, now, where the game has sought to pursuit bigger and bigger gains despite not properly being able to handle the amount of players it has already.

Housing is one of the biggest examples of that. Other MMO's manage to provide player housing for each and every player. Some of them are even older than FFXIV itself, or launched around the same time period.

...and before anyone accuses me of being salty due to lacking a house? I have one. Yet I know many people who don't and likely never will manage to get their hands on one through no fault of their own.

And FFXIV is not Square Enix' sole IP. So what does it matter how much money the company as a whole is worth?

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Originally Posted by Shialan

And FFXIV is not Square Enix' sole IP. So what does it matter how much money the company as a whole is worth?

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I'm pretty sure they've admitted in the past that FFXIV is helping to keep them afloat and is extremely profitable. One can assume, then, that they would be bending over backwards to ensure that things are as stable as possible.

As for their other IP's, I believe there was a certain game that lost the company millions and millions. So the idea that every decision the company makes is great strikes me as rather strange. Let's not forget the state of 1.0, either.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/square-en...vels-avengers/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

NA and EU Worlds haven't been fine since Shadowbringers launch.

There are several people tracking the active characters on the lodestone. In these benchmarks, EU and NA have been at over 20k active characters per world since June 2019. In June 2020 they were at 22-24k. All while japanese servers were at 11k per World. JP just has vastly more worlds per DC and per active player. (let's leave the housing implications per world out for now)

Population grew slowly but steadily and servers have been full. They just didn't do anything and had no plans to do so until post Endwalker launch. It's a massive failure on their planning and managment department since they cheapened out to future proof anything.

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I didn't know about EU having a population issue before this launch, as far as I understood there wasn't any issues logging in nor creating characters or server stability problems. But then I'm a Balmungian, so maybe my metric of a population issue is different because we've always been a very heavily populated server. To the point where I ended up getting my personal housing on Zalera instead, but that can be attributed to the point that it was picked by the community as the unofficial RP server way back when.

But I know they added a new EU and US data center back in 2019. This was to try and handle the expected population issues in preparation for Shadowbringers.

I also know that the global shortage started around 2018 and 2019 due to trade wars that caused a decline and this of course has been exasperated with COVID19. I do not know if at the time they could have then opened another data center or got more servers because they've only made reference to the shortage more recently but then it has only shown itself to be a real issue more recently. At least as far as I am aware, as I've not seen complaint threads or heard any prior to launch and aside from when we got so many new players that they ran out of digital copies of the game.

But the timing of their last implementation of new servers does match when this all started to become a problem. As referenced here.


This quote might be the more relevant part, because I'd expect it may have had an impact on Japanese companies:

Quote:

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The Japan – Korea trade war that began in 2019 commenced with Japan implementing export restrictions on raw materials used to make chips. Major semiconductor manufacturers SK Hynix and Samsung, both headquartered in South Korea, were caught in the crosshairs trying to secure inventory to buffer production against disruption. The major chipmakers in South Korea were heavily dependent on chemicals produced by Japan vital to chipmaking. The already lingering concern of the semiconductor supply chain from tensions between the US and China heightened as a result of this additional disruption to the production of chips coming out of Asia.

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And then of course COVID 19 worsened things.

People don't seem to be able to understand, that it doesn't matter how much a company is worth, or how much money they're making from game sales. If a product that they wish to purchase, is not available, due to there being a world-wide shortage of critical components, you can't just throw money at it to fix it.