Quote Originally Posted by Endemerrin View Post
XIV's profits have only being growing [...]
XIV's profits or the profits from supporting merchandise (Cash shop, plushies etc)?

I mean, I lack official numbers as much as the next guy, but judging from the unofficial censi, we don't have a substantial growth in subscribers and consequently no growth in subscription revenue. If then profits are growing regardless, chances are they are coming from supporting merchandise and from a business perspective, SE would likely rather invest in that, while keeping the game itself on a maintenance budget solely intended to keep the people buying the extra stuff interested in the game, so they keep buying extra stuff. That's not an uncommon milking strategy. And this is the moment where every conspiracy theorist can let their confirmation bias run free, because now we can speculate whether SE actually has done that of late or not.

I'll leave that to others. To me, SE's strategy regarding FFXIV seems very cashcow-y right now, but hey, we can keep our fingers crossed I'm wrong!