Any Final Fantasy XIV player will know by now, considering the deluge of memes across the internet, that FFXIV and Mountain Dew Gaming are working together on a promotion that provides prizes both in and out of the virtual world. But for those excluded from events, it’s not much fun.
The bummer here is that the Mountain Dew Gaming partnership isn’t for all players on the North American Data Centers — the terms and conditions state it’s for residents of the United States only — so that excludes a lot of players typically in that region. And for physical prizes, there’s no shipping outside of the continental US.
Of course, more region locked codes have frustrated players excluded again, particularly those in North American Data Centers but not US residents. The responses to Final Fantasy XIV’s official Twitter account demonstrate as much.
The complaints are pretty evenly spread between Canadian players upset and confused they aren’t included, and those in the UK and EU lamenting that we don’t even seem to get thrown the scraps of these promotions.
There’s one common theme among the comments – why are these promotions region locked? This isn’t the first time that North America (or a select part of it) has benefited from a promotion while the rest of us could only look on longingly. Off the top of my head, I can name two that happened in 2021:
- Butterfinger promo, which gave players the Chocorpokkur mount
- The controversial Grubhub promotion, which gave players the ‘Eat Pizza’ emote
Admittedly, the Eat Pizza emote is now available to purchase on the FFXIV Online Store, but the Chocorpokkur mount is still only owned by those in the USA.
Of course, there are other promotions, such as the Japan-exclusive KFC promotion, which provides players with the ‘Eat Chicken’ emote. But I’d like to mention here that the only promotion that happened in the EU was this one back in 2016, which didn’t make it to the UK.
During the May 16 Live Letter stream, Yoshida noted EU Data Center players should shout out ideas and partnerships they’d like to see. It’s a nice gesture and all, but it’s been a while, and even if you play on one of the Data Centers typically of a certain region, there’s no guarantee you’re included.
Maybe I’m just salty. After all, I am a British player on North American servers, so I will soon have the Mountain Dew exclusive rewards in front of my face with no way of earning them, while my American friends discuss how much Mountain Dew they need to buy to get cool items.
