Final Fantasy 14 sets new record for concurrent players
UPDATE: a million new players in the last month.
UPDATE 07/12/21: Square Enix has confirmed that Final Fantasy 14 now has 25 million registered players.
Back in October, the game was confirmed to be the most profitable in the series and had surpassed 24 million players. That means the game has added around a million new registered players in the last month or so.
With the official release of new expansion Endwalker today, the number of registered players is only going to continue to grow.
ORIGINAL STORY 06/12/21: The early access release for new expansion Endwalker has caused Final Fantasy 14 player numbers to skyrocket, setting a new record for the game.
Friday saw the expansion enter early access and by Sunday the game saw a peak of 95,000 concurrent players, according to SteamDB.
The previous record was 67,000 in July, due to an influx of players following disappointment in rival MMORPG World of Warcraft.
With around 40,000 concurrent players at the end of June, Final Fantasy 14 has effectively doubled its playerbase over the last six months.
This is all the more impressive considering Endwalker isn't fully released until 7th December, meaning these numbers are likely to increase even more.
The opening weekend of record numbers has seen long queue times and disconnects for players hoping to jump into Eorzea, with the game's Twitter account offering frequent updates.
Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida has apologised for the disruption and offered seven free days of game time to compensate.
"Considering that we are asking players to wait in queues for extremely long periods of time and the ongoing situation making it difficult to play normally, we have decided that during the official release of Endwalker on December 7, we will be granting 7 days of free game time to all players who own the full version of the game and have an active subscription," he said in a blog post.
Players were warned of possible congestion ahead of the game's release. The team wished to expand upon its servers, but due to the global shortage of semiconductors this hasn't been possible.