PETITION: Regarding FINAL FANTASY XIV Steam Version (Mar. 8)

[MrKusakabe]

1- price of subscription. In some countries (like mine) is more cheaper to play this game through steam (almost half value each month).
2- some of us didn't knew about this attachement between this game and steam platform at the time these people bought this game.
3- some bought in moments of discounts and promotions on steam site or received a steam copy as a gift.
4- some just didn't knew nothing about issues on steam games (my case as well). And only know about it after this restriction SE is making upon the launcher.
5- some just chose to buy it for another reason. They are costumers neverthless and have protection laws working for them (no matter the reason why they bought this through steam or not they don't stop being costumers of the services).

1) So you have a monetary benefit. Be happy...?
2) This is obvious and known since Steam exists. Since it is the anti-DRM way of how to market games (and thus the high rate of success after several SECUROM and SAFEDISK fiaskos for legit gamers but still piracy going on, games are attached to an account to avoid piracy. This attachment are very, very tight for obvious reasons)
3) Another monetary benefit. Be happy...?
4) I asked many, many people and NONE of them know about issues. You should not jazz up problems that are not there until you experienced them yourself.
5) You have a contract with Steam then. If you choose this as your trade partner, what do you expect?

[Nora_of_Mira]

1- price of subscription. In some countries (like mine) is more cheaper to play this game through steam (almost half value each month).
.

I thought they fixed this, so i did some digging and found this from 2 years ago.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ce-increase%21

I guess only Brazil and Russia got affected, so who knows when things can change.

[Eli85]

Shortest explanation:

When most of people here bought FFXIV in Steam (5 years ago for some of us) they were OK with Steam and they were using it.
As time passed some people have become NOT OK with Steam and no longer willing to use it.
And if they want to continue playing FFXIV they will be forced to use it.
People don't like being forced into doing what they don't like.
As simple as that.

While it's a good explanation, it's also ludicrous and riddled with entitlement. No one, and I mean no one, should be bailed out of a purchasing decision because they are no longer happy with an agreement that they consented to. It's so ridiculous.


So many of these complainers need to be adults and accept the consequences of their purchasing decisions.

[Granyala]

For testing purposes I have migrated my game client and run it via steam for the last week.
Yes it is annoying having to start a launcher, just to have it start ANOTHER launcher, also it is annoying that I still have to punch in my password every time (spoiled by the Blizzard launcher, sue me :P ). That's where the hardships end though. Steam overlay etc. can be deactivated (which I did). No issues so far.

Reinstallation was not necessary. Start the setup in steam, it just DL's the launcher (50MB), then you copy your game into the steamapps\common\FFXIV and you're up and running.
The steam client takes virtually no system resources: 0.2% CPU time and ~100MB of RAM. No network activity unless it updates a game (which you can disable).

Also I have people in my guild playing via steam for years and I never heard of a single instance where they could not log in b/c steam failed to authenticate.

Honestly, I think people make a mountain out of a mole hill here.

So many of these complainers need to be adults and accept the consequences of their purchasing decisions.

Being locked into steam was not a forseeable consequence for people thet bought FF-XIV during ARR times.
To me, steam is merely a game store. Yes most games run their DRM through steam but it makes 0 sense for a subscription MMO to do so because the sub check is it's own DRM you cannot bypass anyway. As such it is highly illogical that SE chains you to steam.

BTW: I can register UbiSoft games in their launcher (which steam starts anyway, similar to the SE launcher) and play them w/o steam, so there is a precedent already set.

[worldofneil]

No one, and I mean no one, should be bailed out of a purchasing decision because they are no longer happy with an agreement that they consented to.

I would agree with you completely, except that we haven't consented to this.

5 years ago we weren't told that 1 year later (and going forward) all expansions to the game would also have to be purchased through Steam.
5 years ago we weren't told that 5 years later we would be forced to run through Steam (even right now it doesn't say that on the Store page and Steam's own ToS says it's not required).

What if tomorrow SE said for your non-Steam account "Hey for all future expansions you can only buy them through us directly. You can't use any other store/outlet". Or if they said "We've released a new SE shop app, you have to download this and you can only run the existing launcher via this". Would you be happy with those scenarios? Because that's exactly what has happened here.

[worldofneil]

Honestly, I think people make a mountain out of a mole hill here.

For me the main annoyance is that I can no longer play from a USB flash drive at other locations. Steam will have now have to be installed which isn't necessarily an option if it's not my PC and I only want to login quickly for retainers/gardening, etc.

Do you have a workaround for that please? Because I asked Steam and Square Enix and neither of them did.

[Granyala]

For me the main annoyance is that I can no longer play from a USB flash drive at other locations. Steam will have now have to be installed which isn't necessarily an option if it's not my PC and I only want to login quickly for retainers/gardening, etc.

Do you have a workaround for that please? Because I asked Steam and Square Enix and neither of them did.

Well, to be frank: if you do not have administative privileges and cannot install steam (and point it to your thumb drive), I would argue that you should not run a video game on said computer.

[ElazulHP]

While it's a good explanation, it's also ludicrous and riddled with entitlement. No one, and I mean no one, should be bailed out of a purchasing decision because they are no longer happy with an agreement that they consented to. It's so ridiculous.


So many of these complainers need to be adults and accept the consequences of their purchasing decisions.

Nobody agreed to it, the decision was forced on people who purchased the Steam version if they wanted to keep playing on the HW expansion with their current character. If you're not a Steam client user you also should probably just sit down as this doesn't impact you at all. Square should absolutely at the very least let people buy Non-Steam licenses and apply them to our accounts. Having to create a new account and abandon our 5 year old characters is an outrageous solution and I guarantee if that becomes the only option many people will just quit outright if this change impacts their ability to play the game negatively.

[worldofneil]

Well, to be frank: if you do not have administative privileges and cannot install steam (and point it to your thumb drive), I would argue that you should not run a video game on said computer.

Steam can't be run from a thumb drive. It needs to install a service on the Windows PC. It's not so much not having admin permissions, it's the fact that you have to actually install something on a PC (that you might not even own) and right now you can play the game from a USB drive without having to do anything at all.

[Ayuhra]

For testing purposes I have migrated my game client and run it via steam for the last week.
Yes it is annoying having to start a launcher, just to have it start ANOTHER launcher, also it is annoying that I still have to punch in my password every time (spoiled by the Blizzard launcher, sue me :P ). That's where the hardships end though. Steam overlay etc. can be deactivated (which I did). No issues so far.

Reinstallation was not necessary. Start the setup in steam, it just DL's the launcher (50MB), then you copy your game into the steamapps\common\FFXIV and you're up and running.
The steam client takes virtually no system resources: 0.2% CPU time and ~100MB of RAM. No network activity unless it updates a game (which you can disable).

Also I have people in my guild playing via steam for years and I never heard of a single instance where they could not log in b/c steam failed to authenticate.

Honestly, I think people make a mountain out of a mole hill here.


Being locked into steam was not a forseeable consequence for people thet bought FF-XIV during ARR times.
To me, steam is merely a game store. Yes most games run their DRM through steam but it makes 0 sense for a subscription MMO to do so because the sub check is it's own DRM you cannot bypass anyway. As such it is highly illogical that SE chains you to steam.

BTW: I can register UbiSoft games in their launcher (which steam starts anyway, similar to the SE launcher) and play them w/o steam, so there is a precedent already set.

The changes marrying to the two launchers by "force" have not yet been implemented so for now there aren't many issues. There might not be issues later, either, but the change WAS already delayed once due to a showstopping bug.