Housing is hard to come by in the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, as there’s limited space and lots within the game’s residential areas. It’s why Square Enix also has a condition that if a house hasn’t been accessed for 30 days, it’ll be marked for automatic demolition–and after 45 days of inactivity, the house will then be removed. However, citing the effects of coronavirus and its impact on people’s situations–and by extension, its player base–Square Enix has enacted a temporary freeze on its housing policy.
On the official FFXIV site, Square Enix put out a statement about the change and stated, “Taking into account the world-wide spread of the COVID-19 (also known as ‘novel coronavirus’) and the economical effects of various cities going into lock-down, we have decided to temporarily suspend automatic housing demolition.”
The freeze on housing demolition went into effect immediately. However, if your house had already been marked for demolition prior to the change in policy, you’ll need to access your house in order to save it. The freeze will be in effect indefinitely as the FFXIV team said that it will “monitor the situation in the coming days, and inform you all when we have come to a decision that auto-demolition can commence again.”
Considering that in-game housing is tough to get in FFXIV, and the fact that many who own estates put a ton of time and effort into designing their homes, it’s a nice gesture to those who might have trouble accessing the game at this time. It’d be pretty sad to come back to the game to see the property you’ve invested in demolished, especially if the current real-world circumstances have prevented you from playing FFXIV.
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