Please allow Steam License holders to buy a standalone PC License.

[Navastro]

I use steam since forever and it always works. Never had any problems with it so maybe that's why I don't understand. Also, I think that most of you are in a minority as most of the players that own FFXIV on Steam, own many other games there. I had no idea that some of you may play FFXIV with Steam license when you lost access to it, how in the world are you buying expansions?

OK, I'm not gonna argue with anyone as I'm biased towards Steam. I own most of my games there, use Steam wallet for subbing (best currency exchange), never had any problems.

I 100% agree tho, that we should be able to buy all licenses as we want, be it Steam, Windows Standalone, PS or Mac. More money for SE. Someone at Square Enix is not seeing easy money.

[Imora]

Having to link a steam account - another layer of potential security breach - sounds like a bad idea for the average user, OTP/AUTH are way better solutions, but even then... Phishing attempts have increased not just for Steam and Discord but FFXIV accounts too, more and more average users have their accounts hacked, and if you're going to lock game access between not one but TWO accounts now, it's going to become a nightmare for those tech illiterate users to have to contact both Steam and FFXIV to recover in unison, and in some cases steam doesn't really do much either.

Also what's to be said about region locking via steam now if a user moves countries and wants to continue playing their same steam account? Will the FFXIV game become inaccessible ala Malaysian stores? Or will they be able to continue playing from that steam account? Do we need to take Steam account locations into account now too?

Over the years lots of people I've raided with have been stationed overseas for military work or contracting, moving from USA to JP or KR mostly, or even to MY or SG. These are my concerns.

Personally, I won't be hit hard by this as it just means I click the play button on steam as usual, but for a large group of people this is a very bad idea.

It also brings one question to mind, why is FFXIV being pushed into enforcing steam launching but numerous other games and even MMORPGs running through steam are not?

Also the Steamdeck only allows you to run FFXIV via Proton if you use the old launcher layout, not the new one, rip Steamdeck?? (Just something to keep in mind if anyone on this forum uses)



TL;DR
LET ME GIVE YOU MORE GOD DAMN MONEY TO BUY A PC LICENSE SQUARE ENIX

I moved US to EU and had to buy a whole new account. Steam users can't do this with FF can they?

[Imora]

Well ,my Steam account Region is Europe but my SE Service Account is NA. Support told me that it has to be the same Region to match up. So that means I will be locked out of my FF account in March. Bloody great.

Lovely.

I got a new account entirely after moving to the EU. For a few reasons. Being unable to buy ShB was one.

[ACE135]

It's with every MMORPG that comes to Steam I guess, that you need a different game account for that. When I "bought" Black Desert on Steam when it was for free, I couldn't use the account I already had from the publisher itself. So the Steam releases seem to not be compatible with the non Steam releases.

[Bearded]

It's all to do with licensing and contracts between SE and Steam. That's not going to change unless one of them offers the other of them a lot of money to compensate for the lost income they will no longer get from the subs and purchases via Steam.

Everyone on Steam who uses the PC can freely set up a totally new service account and start over - it's not ideal I know but that's the only way out of it.

[Arkfrost]

Everyone on Steam who uses the PC can freely set up a totally new service account and start over - it's not ideal I know but that's the only way out of it.

Tell that to people like me, who have 6 or more years on their account, have every seasonal item since then, bought every mount, minion, emote and a lot of items from the mogstation, have enormous grind achievements like the Pteranodon mount, most relic weapons, have cleared Ultimate, etc.

This is no solution for people who have spent a fortune and over 15k hours of playtime on their account already, before this ridiculous hard-tying of Steam to the FFXIV account happened.

If we could simply transfer our characters from one account to another then this wouldn't be a problem.

[Bearded]

Tell that to people like me, who have 6 or more years on their account, have every seasonal item since then, bought every mount, minion, emote and a lot of items from the mogstation, have enormous grind achievements like the Pteranodon mount, most relic weapons, have cleared Ultimate, etc.

This is no solution for people who have spent a fortune and over 15k hours of playtime on their account already, before this ridiculous hard-tying of Steam to the FFXIV account happened.

If we could simply transfer our characters from one account to another then this wouldn't be a problem.

I did not say it was ideal but sadly it is all down to the contract and T&C's you agreed to when you purchased the game via Steam - they trapped you that's what they want - to be the only place you purchase content from.

[colnix]

It would be great if thewe will be at least a character trasfer form 1 SE into other SE, but... As i remember asking support about the possibility - they said "no". But it had been long time ago

[Youkulm]

I moved US to EU and had to buy a whole new account. Steam users can't do this with FF can they?

Unfortunately no, not to my knowledge.

It would be great if thewe will be at least a character trasfer form 1 SE into other SE, but... As i remember asking support about the possibility - they said "no". But it had been long time ago

Yeah if we could transfer characters to other accounts, I'd just do that to escape steam, but I can see why SE doesn't offer this. It would make RMT even easier. Already so many people selling characters.

[RadicalPesto]

My wife seems to having a similar problem. She got the game gifted to her years back when she was playing in NA region (and was gifted an NA license). She has now moved in with me in Europe and she's worried she wont be able to play the game anymore because of the steam link situation. Up until now she has been able to buy expansions normally but its unclear whether or not she'll get soft-banned. Like many of you here she has a similar situation - 8 years on her account, many cash shop items, raid clears, items that are now no longer obtainable etc.... Messed up situation if thats actually how SE wants to handle the matter.