Bought KFC meal but cannot register emote

Hello,
I recently bought the KFC meal in Japan that gives you the emote, I somehow cannot register it.
"The code's region is inapplicable. You can only enter codes from the same region as your Square Enix account."
Is the emote just good as gone? Or can I have some help with support?

Your SE account needs to be a Japanese account, or you can't use the emote code. It's region locked.

If you obtained the code from a certain website as many have fried and failed-cough, then you should get it refunded asap.

If you are in Japan then you should already know it can't be used in any other region, you are out of luck.

The only way to use the code is to create a Japanese region SE account, buy the game from Japan or the JP SE store and then you'd be able to use the code.

Good morning! Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

We apologize for any inconvenience that has occurred when playing Final Fantasy XIV. Unfortunately, the issue you are describing does not appear to be a technical issue. I will go ahead and move this thread to “General Discussion" instead. As previously mentioned, unfortunately the promotion was only available for the Japan region for Japanese SQUARE ENIX Accounts.

Thank you once again for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums!

Thank you very much Votraftur for the prompt response.

Is it possible to escalate the issue and figure out if it will be possible to redeem the emotes for non JP accounts as well?

There are more people with friends in JP that sent their codes as friend gift that could not redeem it.
the information says its being sold only in japan. But not about being redeemable only in JP region account.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it's not the first time they've had region locked promotions.
So if I'm not wrong with that, I'd personally just assume straight away that a code from a different region would be locked in all other regions.

I wasn't even aware of such a promotion so haven't seen myself if there's been any fineprint anywhere saying that it's region locked or not.
only quick google search I could get was that it was only available in japan.

There have indeed been other region-locked codes. I would venture to say that SE does that intentionally, and region-locked codes will not be made available for other regions.

Just like the NA region got the pizza emote, and JP region did not.

Unfortunately it's region locked. I miss the old days of gaming where you buy a game and you just need to unlock everything. Oh well, nothing we can do about it.

feels like a punch in the face.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MAJRIS

Thank you very much Votraftur for the prompt response.

Is it possible to escalate the issue and figure out if it will be possible to redeem the emotes for non JP accounts as well?

There are more people with friends in JP that sent their codes as friend gift that could not redeem it.
the information says its being sold only in japan. But not about being redeemable only in JP region account.

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Promotional codes are usually region locked because of various legal restrictions in many countries.

Support is not going to be able to assist in this case. You would have to purchase a JP game license to use the emote.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Promotional codes are usually region locked because of various legal restrictions in many countries.

Support is not going to be able to assist in this case. You would have to purchase a JP game license to use the emote.

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Support might be able to make a suggestion to change the documentation to actually include the information, instead of leaving it out.

But yha, thanks to the OP for being the person to post, in public, on this forum, to show others that it IS region locked. We'd assumed, but ... assumption is the mother of all f ups.

KFC Holdings Japan which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan, Ltd is controlled by Mistsubishi and is a publicly traded corp on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It was initally a JV between Mitsubishi and the US KFC entity but the latter’s shares were bought back by the former in 2007:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20.../#.Uc8qVvnVDK0

From what I have gathered, KFC Holdings appears to have a master franchise agreement directly with Yum! for the Japan territory and not with its US subsidiary KFC corporation. So it’s a distinct legal entity altogether under Japanese control and the promotion would have been done under an agreement between Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan, Ltd and SE which explains why it was limited to Japan only.

An entirely separate agreement would need to be negotiated for North America (and even then Canada might left out in the cold), and EU would be a nightmare.