Steam version subscription.

[Okottekoneko]

Square Enix needs one thing from him to convert his trial account to a full account, and that is the game key from a full edition of the game. You can either a) buy a box copy of it and add they key to the square enix account, or b) purchase the full game in steam in which case steam provides you with a game key that you then add to you square enix account.

You don't even need steam after buying it from steam. I attempted to back up the steam version to copy it to my laptop and it not only failed, but suddenly saw my entire installation as invalid and tried to download everything again. So I said F it, downloaded the ff14 client installer, set it up and then copied my old data over and viola, stand alone version of the game that no longer uses steam.

Ill pass that on, hopefully that works for him