Development Officially Delayed due to COVID-19

[Anvaire]

I'm glad they have done this. The health and safety of the development team should always come first. Besides even if it becomes a 2-month delay, it will likely just mean that the expansion is delayed or the content drought between the final patch and expansion launch is smaller. Either way, i'm glad they have communicated this and put the development team first.

[CrunchyMilk]

Absolutely. Keep yourselves healthy and happy. It's so much more important that you keep yourselves and your families safe. The value of human beings is far greater than digital content. Even great digital content <3

[Eldevern]

Not surprising since Emergency state have be decided for Tokyo and SE have one Covid case detected, according to the News. Pretty understandable then, safety first.

[Derio]

Just hope the devs are safe. But this means more time for ff7R

[Kytrin]

I'm glad they're taking it seriously, and doing what they have to in order to stay safe. I've got more than enough to do on my main and alt to keep me busy until the new patch, so as far as I'm concerned it's all good and they can take their time. Their health is far more important than new content. Who knows, maybe I'll even get around to dragging all my various jobs up to 80!

Yeah... not gonna hold my breath on that last one... <.<

[Paladinleeds]

I will say I'm glad SE have taken the decision of "Staff health and wellbeing comes first, sorry guys, we have to delay". They didn't even need to apologise but that's just the Japanese nature to apologise for any kind of delay (and actually MEAN it). You have to give credit where it's due there. I hope the staff are all holding up OK in terms of mental health during this very difficult time.

[Conando]

Most of their game is done in Japan where lockdown is not in place and situation is under control, unless it changed to worse.

Did you read it? Tokyo is under a state of emergency now. Factoring in the 3 other regions they get dev support from, every single aspect of development is impacted.

[WhiteArchmage]

Hope the dev team stays safe, we can live with a delay, no need to put them at risk.

[Nedkel]

I mean...

"Here in Tokyo, where the FFXIV team is located, a state of emergency has been declared, and we have been ordered to take preventative measures to curb further spread of the virus." - to quote from the lodestone-post

This doesnt sound like the virus has no effect on/in japan and/or on the development, like you seem to be implying...?

My bad, i assumed japan did not have lockdown.

[Raiya]

Good to know that the staff are doing well, the delay is no suprise to be fair we all knew that this pandemic was eventually going to hit FFXIV sooner or later it's run roughshod over pretty much every sector of the world economy with some even predicting a 2nd Great Depression as a fallout from all this. Least the one good thing they have going for them is that they can reorganise to work and develop remotely in the medium to long term to reduce the effects of this thing and hopefully in some parts it will have abated by may or june.

Maybe they can rerun older events or organise some limited time prizes for things to keep people entertained in the meantime, if were lucky as well this delay wont hit as bad in the long run as they might make it back up with a smaller gap between the 5.55 and 6.0 patch next year!