RIP Steam's Free Trial, and my account

VPN
1

Hello, I am a free trial player from the Philippines and I just found out that Steam recently updated the game’s free trial store page to restrict regions that do not have their own data centers (https://steamdb.info/sub/54244/history/). I can’t access my account anymore because of my license being applied through Steam (maybe I still can through a VPN, but that in itself is problematic and inconvenient), so almost 2,000 hours of free trial content down the drain.

I wish there was some kind of warning to this, I would’ve gone through SE’s process instead. There were discussions of license keys being incompatible with SE and Steam respectively, but it didn’t strike me as something that would affect the free trial’s page for all the years it was up.

I doubt support would help me because of the terms, so I’m trying to accept that I have to go through everything I’ve done in the game all over again. If you are a foreign person looking forward to playing the game, free trial or not, please use SE’s launcher in verifying your license.

2

I would contact support anyway to let them know that Steam has blocked the game in your region. If Square Enix didn’t approve this move, Steam have just done a MAJOR fuck-up. There was no warning about this happening from Square Enix either which is having me think that Steam did this without approval… Definitely open a support ticket and see what they say. Maybe they’ll be able to transfer your character somehow as well.

3

As a fellow player from the Philippines who jumped through a ton of hoops to even play FFXIV 1.0 back in the day (legitimate US address of family there for my account and all) and had to VPN to buy Dawntrail given the new restrictions…

I wish you all the best.

If you still want to play, I’d go make a new trial account using the FFXIV launcher and just slowly build up from there again. :confused: But i can imagine how frustrating that’d be.

4

The DC part isn’t true. I live in a South American country and don’t see it, or its neighboring countries, on the ban list. I honestly can’t think of a reason why they’d ban all those countries from purchasing the game, however…

5

The warning was in the License agreement at time of account creation.

SE will probably not provide any support as Philippines is not a supported country.

(a) For the American Region, “SQUARE ENIX” means Square Enix, Inc.

You are in the “American Region” if you are located in: North America, South America, Central America, American Samoa, Guam, the United States Minor Outlying Islands, the Caribbean (excluding Cuba), Hong Kong, Singapore.

(b) For the EMEA Region, “SQUARE ENIX” means Square Enix Ltd.

You are in the “EMEA Region” if you are located in: Åland Islands, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Bouvet Island, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Island, Comoros, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cook Islands, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Fiji, Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, French Southern Territories (South Pacific), Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Guernsey, Holy See/Vatican City State, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Jersey, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyz, Latvia, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Monaco, Mongolia, Montserrat, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Norfolk Island, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Réunion, Romania, Russian Federation, Saint Helena, Samoa, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Seychelles, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Tokelau, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Yemen, Zambia.

(c) For the Japanese Region, “SQUARE ENIX” means Square Enix Co., Ltd.

You are in the “Japanese Region” if you are located in: Japan.

6

I had this issue before. I had full level 60’s and when I wanted to continue into Stormblood back when it wasn’t free yet, I couldn’t buy the game.

I asked SE support if I could transfer my progress and they wouldn’t let me.

Due to my immense love for the game, I started anew but not anymore on Steam.

You’ve got no choice but at least you know how to level things up quickly.

Good luck and godspeed with getting back all your progress. o7

7

other parts of asia don’t matter to japan

Going on at least 100 years now

8

is my geography wrong but isnt the phillipeames faily close to thr oceana servers?

9

That’s what I did back in 2022 and it’s been no prob so far:

  1. Turn on a VPN. That’s the one and only time you ever need it.
  2. create an account bound to a country that can gift stuff to your country and region. WARNING tho: you need a legitimate info that confirms if two regions can gift stuff to each other. At the moment I know for sure that it’s possible within CIS region almost without restrictions, at least for now.
  3. once done, turn a VPN off, its not needed anymore.
  4. buy a steam gift card for that new acc / or use a 3rd party vendor/wallet that can help you to add funds to steam wallet within that region.
  5. If all’s good, the gift can be bought and sent to your main acc just fine.

I gifted DT pre-order to my main acc using this strat and it worked just fine.

Tbh, all this Mog VS steam stuff is a double edged sword: while for some steam wallet is the only option left, other regions just outright not supported by steam, same goes for the mogstation, kinda. But that’s the reality we live in, so… Gotta deal with it, somehow.

And good luck, my friend. I would advise against dumping those 2k hours, if possible, but if that’s the only way out, then go for it. Let’s hope mogstation doesn’t come up with smth stupid in the future. My only concern is tho, that after payment processor changes in April this year, you still might not be able to buy a full game and sub in SE store and Mog, because if your region is not officially supported, you’ll need a fake address, and if your card info doesn’t match the registered address, you won’t be able to buy anything anyway. So, eternal free trial it’s going to be.

If you have more questions regarding his method, feel free to ask here or dm me, I’ll do my best to help out.

Edit: can you still play the game with store page being unavailable? A screenshot or two would be helpful, as I have no idea what it looks like if your region is not supported.

10

Well, it’s not Steam who’s making these changes, they’re on SE. So you should probably contact SE for further explanations on why they did it.

11

as a pinoy good thing I dont trust Square and Steam together, they’re fine seperately. Always go for the Square Enix route even tho it’s a freaking hassle to navigate their website vs steam

12

You don’t have access to your account from the standalone launcher?

13

Hi OP. Steam user from the PH here.

I go through the hassle of converting my steam account region to US everytime a new expansion drops.
Once you convert your account to another region (in this case, US) the FT page will be searchable again.

Note: this method is bannable by steam and keeps your account locked to that region for 3 months. So do at your own risk. I’ve been doing this since Stormblood and my acc is still fine.

14

Same thing happened to me, 2.6k hours down the drain. It was a fun ride, I hope I will meet my character once more in the future…

15

Wait. Why did SE deem Philippines an illegal country?

16

Maybe you can buy the game and have the character transferred?

17

I’m pissed off with trying to play this game. Made an account completely outside of steam and decided to come back. Bought the game on square enix store and game time. Now support is telling me my account is somehow a steam account?? Like it’s not even linked and I have 0 hours played… It’s just stupid the hoops you have to jump through to play this game and it’s really disappointing.

18

In a nutshell, the game not being available in the PH steam page but the FT is a warning that you dont use steam to play ff14. We have been warning players who are interested in the game that you should not play the game on steam (in ff14 ph fb group, PHGamers subreddit and word of mouth).

19

And yet another downside to using steam. Extra unnecessary steps in anything seldom help (just add another point of failure).

20

Maybe try buying the full game via vpn?