FF14: A Decade of Underinvestment - Square Enix's latest Financial Report

The following reports are used for this post:

Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 2025

Three-Month Period Ended June 30, 2025

As I touched briefly upon in my previous post on Final Fantasy 16 (link), the decision to have Yoshi-P and some of his team help develop two gargantuan titles concurrently was always going to have consequences. Now, with the release of Square Enix's latest financial reports, we have undeniable proof of the fallout. Dawntrail hasn't just been a disappointing expansion; it's a flop so significant that it is severely hurting Final Fantasy 14's image as a whole.

To be clear, my own journey with the game paused around patch 6.1. I was honestly done after the Endwalker main story, but the residual good feelings and camaraderie with my FC kept me around a little longer. By that point, the combat rotation had become painfully dull, a core part of the experience I just couldn't enjoy anymore. While Endwalker’s story had its incredible highs, it wasn’t without problems. I still haven't forgiven them for turning Anima, a summon with such a deep and tragic backstory from Final Fantasy 10, into a generic, half-arsed dungeon boss. At the time, I chalked these issues up to the difficulties of development during the pandemic.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Let's look at the hard data. For the fiscal year ending this past March, Final Fantasy 14 was highly profitable, bolstered by the anticipation and launch of Dawntrail. Net sales for the MMO segment were up 17.3% to ¥55.5 billion. Things looked rosy. But that didn't last.

The quarterly report covering April to 30th June 2025, the period of Dawntrail’s launch, revealed a shocking reversal. The MMO segment experienced a steep 23% drop in sales and a 45% drop in profits compared to the same period last year. Think about that. The game was more profitable during a content lull deep in Endwalker cycle than it was during the launch of a brand-new, flagship expansion. That is exceptionally alarming, a fact not lost on Square Enix's own leadership, who in their report stated an aim to "regain... popularity and user base".

Many people try to handwave this away as a simple "post-COVID correction". This is just incorrect. The surge of "COVID gamers" peaked between 2020 and 2021. By 2023, life had largely resumed, and the gaming population had stabilised. The strong financial performance in 2024, before Dawntrail, proves the player base was healthy and normal. This isn't a post-pandemic trend but a clear Dawntrail problem.

The Dawntrail Problem is a Square Enix Problem

No, the issue runs much deeper than a simple expansion, but let's get the Wuk Lamat-shaped elephant out of the room first. Dawntrail itself has been a massive letdown for many. I had planned to return with friends, but after reading the reviews, I don't think I will. For a game that has always put its story first, the narrative and its new main character are undoubtedly the most criticised parts of this expansion. If you want some entertainment, go check the official Final Fantasy 14 forum thread about Wuk Lamat. The last I looked, it was over 300 pages!

Then you have the predictable and stale content cycle, and the stale combat. It was already in a bad state by Endwalker, but apparently, it's become even more streamlined, with every job adhering to the same rigid two-minute rotation.

But I don't want to focus too much on the specifics of Dawntrail, as that's been discussed to death by people who played. I want to talk about the root cause: Square Enix's handling of Final Fantasy 14 over the last decade and its crippling technical debt.

Veteran players know exactly what I'm talking about. Despite being the literal pillar of the company, saving them from countless poor decisions and financial gambles, it feels like Final Fantasy 14 has never had even ten percent of its profits reinvested back into its own infrastructure. The biggest problem is the engine. Yoshi-P and his team have often joked, quite seriously, about the spaghetti code they are forced to work with. This is an engine that was never meant for a multiplayer game, much less an MMO. It was then rushed through a rewrite for A Realm Reborn and has had a decade of new code bolted onto its fragile frame.

The technical debt is now so mind-bogglingly insane that the developers cannot even simply increase the inventory space for the glamour wardrobe without fearing it might permanently break characters. When you understand this, the stale, predictable nature of Dawntrail becomes clear. They can't develop something drastically new or different because it would risk collapsing the entire game. And since the old formula has been so successful, why risk it? Imagine Yoshi-P trying to tell the Square Enix board he needs more time and money for a risky overhaul of their biggest cash cow. His hands are tied.

Except now, the debt has finally accumulated to the point where it can't be hidden by a fresh coat of paint. The players are tired of it, they can't even get something simple like better housing, yet another clear limitation of the engine. Square Enix knew about the engine problems. Yoshi-P has been transparent about them for years. Yet they seemingly never allocated the resources to fix the foundation, instead choosing to milk the game to fund their other failures. They had their chance during Stormblood. By then, the game was a certified pillar, profitable enough to justify a major investment while still being early enough in its life that the engine could have been salvaged by a dedicated team. Maybe the current CEO, Takashi Kiryu, who actually plays the game, would have seen the wisdom in that. But his predecessor, Matsuda? Clearly not.

Adding to Dawntrail's woes was the fact Yoshi-P's attention and some team were split, working on Final Fantasy 16 at the same time. As I've said before, no matter how talented the team is, both games were going to be affected. The story and character problems in Dawntrail feel like a direct result of that divided focus, the engine problems would be the same, but at-least those could have been alleviated. When an investor asked Kiryu about the team being stretched thin, the response was pure corporate nonsense about having a "robust organizational structure". It was a completely out-of-touch answer that ignored the reality of creative development.