Quote Originally Posted by Erza_Scarlets View Post
Pretty simple if you don't want to deal with steam buy the windows version and use it. If you want steam things use steam version installed through steam. Dunno why its such issue.
The issue is that in doing this we would have to start fresh. You cannot register a Steam copy and a Windows copy on the same game account. The expense of rebuying the games isn't what is bothering players, it's the fact we'd have to start over on new characters do all the story, and buy all the Mogstation gear we earned by doing in game events to get back to where we are now on our current characters. For those of us who bought back in ARR, the steam version was not advertised as being any different, and regular MMO players who had several MMOs via Steam would not have expected them to function any differently. IE Steam launches the client and then has nothing more to do with the game, all your interactions with the game were managed by the devs/publishers of the MMO itself. Steam could dc, crash, etc and none of this would affect the game you were running. This whole Steam integration is a relatively new thing in terms of MMOs on Steam.

I will also point out that other MMOs that have started to do this allow PC and Steam keys to be registered to the same account. So FFXIV is pretty much alone in the field of having 100% exclusive keys for steam and PC versions and not allowing one to be registered against the other.