Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV launched September 30, 2010 to near-universal condemnation (Metacritic 49), prompting Square Enix president Yoichi Wada to apologize, suspend subscription fees, remove producer Hiromichi Tanaka, and install Naoki Yoshida in December 2010. Yoshida kept patching 1.0 while secretly rebuilding the game, which relaunched as A Realm Reborn on August 27, 2013. Five expansions followed — Heavensward (2015), Stormblood (2017), Shadowbringers (2019), Endwalker (2021), Dawntrail (2024) — with a sixth (Evercold) announced for January 2027, major patches still landing every few months, and the game expanding from PC/PS3 to PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch 2.

• Yoshida's team rebuilt the entire game while still patching 1.0, then delivered five expansions and announced a sixth across 13 years.
• Letter from the Producer Live streams and direct producer communication set the industry standard for post-launch transparency.
• The Endwalker congestion crisis was met with 21 days of free game time and voluntarily suspended sales rather than silence.
• The minuses: 1.0's repair took nearly three years, and the subscription model means the recovery was never free.