Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail players on PlayStation and Xbox get free game time as Yoshi-P apologizes for the bumpy launch

Final Fantasy 14 is offering free game time as an apology for Dawntrail's launch issues across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and more.

Game director and producer Naoki Yoshida published another new blog on the Lodestone today, July 5. In it, Yoshida apologizes for launch issues surrounding Dawntrail when it went into early access last week. Yoshida acknowledges two core issues: that some Xbox Series X/S players were experiencing crashes when loading new areas and that some PS5 players were temporarily unable to log in.

As such, players on both platforms will be granted free game time starting next week on July 10. Xbox Series X/S players will be granted a total of eight days of game time in Final Fantasy 14, while their PS5 counterparts will be granted two days of game time, which should tell you something about the severity of the issues both platforms were facing.

"Once again, I’d like to apologize for the issues that have occurred and thank you all for your cooperation in easing congestion," Yoshida adds, writing earlier that players utilizing the 'World Visit System' and 'Data Center Travel' features actually ended up helping congestion during Dawntrail's launch. That's "resulted in a very stable overall login/playing experience," Yoshida writes.

So it's not been an entirely smooth experience for Square Enix over the last few days, but it's been a damn sight better than Endwalker's launch, which saw players queueing for days, and Final Fantasy 14 being pulled from sale, such were servers struggling to keep up with the influx of players.

Despite all this, Final Fantasy 14 has reached a record-high concurrent player peak thanks to Dawntrail's launch, Yoshida revealed earlier this week. The MMO is continuing to hit new highs for Square Enix, well over a decade removed from A Realm Reborn rebooting the entire game after a pretty disastrous launch years prior. 

Barely 6 days after Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail's Early Access launch, devs line up sweeping job changes targeting the Viper's "busyness," the Monk’s "inadequate performance," and much more.