Yoshida is participating in the investigation personally
[Update: It’s not looking too good for Final Fantasy XIV‘s housing lottery, at least in the near future. On April 22, nearly a week after the initial investigation took place, producer Naoki Yoshida confirmed that while lottery data can be restored and the system can be patched up, those fixes will not be coming in the April 26 6.11 patch. Instead, it’ll arrive “at a later date.” Yoshida concludes by saying “Rest assured that we are taking every precaution to ensure the smooth reintroduction of the lottery system.”]
It feels like forever ago, but back in December, we were given access to the Empyreum housing district in Final Fantasy XIV. It was a “look but don’t touch” situation, as the housing was there; we just couldn’t actually buy any plots yet. Fast forward to nearly half a year later and that time has come, though currently Final Fantasy XIV‘s housing lottery is bugged.
Endwalker just can’t catch a break! Following the launch woes, the expansion has hit another snag. As stated in a community update from Square Enix, the lottery system has been buggy since it debuted, and the fix isn’t easy due to a “very complex process” with “many patterns involved.” As a result, the team and producer Naoki “Yoshi P” Yoshida are investigating it, but it will “take some time to pinpoint the problem.”
A day later, Yoshida even published a massive missive on the bug, dispelling notions that Square Enix was “manipulating the lottery.” The team is retroactively looking at ensuring accounts are in good standing, too, and have access to the data: “We will continue to carefully investigate and address the causes of these types of occurrences. We still have the lottery data, and it is possible for us to confirm the status of entry applications through our database server logs. These logs will be referenced to ensure that players who have accepted their gil refund from losing the lottery will not be negatively affected by the measures we will be taking afterwards. We apologize for the inconvenience caused by these issues, but please rest assured regarding this point.”
Yoshida then painstakingly explains all of the details of the housing lottery, to spell out how they’re addressing it and acknowledge concerns about manipulation. He also apologizes for not wording a prior update correctly and causing confusion. The last update was on April 16, and the team will “follow up with the measures we will be taking to ensure the issue does not reoccur, but for now, we will do our utmost to identify and address the cause as soon as possible.”
There’s a level of transparency here that’s just not found in a lot of other games. For many projects, leads rarely leave their ivory towers to deliver personal statements like this: or in some cases, statements at all.
