As multiple wildfires rage around the Los Angeles area, the Final Fantasy 14 team has decided to delay the game’s automatic housing demolition on North American servers so that players affected by the disaster, and therefore unable to log into the game, won’t lose their digital homes.
The auto-demolition counter was suspended for the Aether, Crystal, Dynamis, and Primal data centers on Jan. 9 at 8:20 p.m. PT, and the devs plan to monitor the situation in Southern California for the foreseeable future before reactivating it. Under normal circumstances, Final Fantasy 14 players lose their housing after 45 days of not accessing the property due to its high demand within the community.
Final Fantasy 14 has previously frozen regional auto-demolition for other natural disasters, including the 2018 Japanese floods, Hurricane Michael, the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes, the 2024 Noto earthquake, and Hurricane Helene.
“From all of us on the Final Fantasy 14 development and management team, our hearts go out to those who were affected by the mountain fires that occurred around Los Angeles in North America,” Square Enix’s most recent message reads. “It is our sincere hope that recovery is swift, and those of you who were affected will be able to rejoin us in FF14 soon.”
The Los Angeles Times reports at least 10 people have died, over 100,000 residents have been forced to evacuate, 9,000 structures have been destroyed, and tens of thousands of acres have been burned by the several massive wildfires affecting the area. If you’re willing and able to support the affected, the LA Times has also collected a large list of organizations accepting donations here.
