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Square Enix is no stranger to brand collaborations. Through the lifespan of Final Fantasy XIV, the developer and publisher has teamed up to distribute unique mounts and emotes to players that participate and gobble up collaboration goods for the aforementioned rewards. The most recently FFXIV collaboration is with bubble tea brand Gong Cha to reward players with an exclusive mount, which everyone was excited for.
For posterities sake, I decided I would actually attempt at participating in a Final Fantasy XIV collaboration. Now that I was in North America, it would be significantly easier and I wouldn’t be barred from obtaining a unique mount because I could get a specific Butterfinger bar in Germany, or the Pizza Hut at the hauptbahnhof (or main train station) wasn’t part of a previous collaboration because it wasn’t located in the United States. And with Gong Cha having so many locations in my neighborhood I figured that there was a high chance I’d be able to obtain the exclusive collaboration mount (which is just a variation of a mount players can already obtain in game entirely for free, they just put a crown on a pig).
This was absolutely not the case. The Gong Cha FFXIV collaboration started on July 17, 2024. I thought about getting some bubble tea from Gong Cha on July 18, 2024 which meant that there was a high chance I would not be getting the mount. Which was entirely correct. I called my local Gong Cha to ask if there were any FFXIV mount codes still available, and I was promptly notified that no, there were not. Doing a quick search on Reddit and Twitter, I learned that Square Enix and Gong Cha decided that codes would be given out on scratch cards that are apparently in limited supply. Instead of taking the route of printing a code on a receipt, the code would instead be distributed through a select amount of these scratch cards. So even if you did go to a participating Gong Cha location (because not all of them are), you’d run the risk of spending around $20 on bubble tea for nothing — not even a commemorative key chain, since those are also sold out depending on the store you go to.
Now $20 on a mount is a bit steep. But arguably, it is cheaper than most everything you will find on Square Enix’s official Final Fantasy XIV Online Store. Mounts there range from $12 to $37 depending on how many players each mount can carry, how old a mount is, and if it was tied to a previous seasonal event. Even then, paying $20 for what is effectively the same mount players can get through Nu Mou Tribe Quests in Shadowbringers feels a little pricy.
Now this isn’t the first time Square Enix has had some difficulties with Final Fantasy XIV collaborations. There was the aforementioned Pizza Hut collaboration, which distributed a pizza eating emote through purchasing a pizza from participating locations, that also distributed codes in limited supply. This emote can now be purchased on the Final Fantasy XIV Online Store for $7. Or the Butterfinger collaboration, which netted players an exclusive chocolate-colored Korpokkur which were then made available through a Twitch campaign in 2024 to celebrate the release of Dawntrail. There were difficulties redeeming codes for this, so I suppose Square Enix figured that distributing this mount for free was probably a good idea. This makes me wonder if the now-exclusive Porxie mount will eventually be available to obtain through other means. Which would be nice, because I guess these collaborations are mostly about the experience of gathering as many Butterfinger bars in your arms as possible to get mounts for you and your friends, or waiting two hours for bubble tea only to be told that the store has run out of codes.
Final Fantasy XIV is a popular game, there’s no doubt about that. So it makes me wonder why code distribution for these exclusive mounts or emotes are distributed the way they are. I mean, it’s definitely a system that works for Japan, but that can’t be said for other regions. And I think of Square Enix is going to continue to try and bring brand collaborations to North America and Europe, they should do so with those respective regions in mind. Because the worst case scenario are these codes being sold online for hundreds of dollars, which is already happening, and players feeling burned by a lack of proper rollout for what should be an exciting event for the community.
Final Fantasy XIV is available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X. The FFXIV Gong Cha collaboration will run from July 17 to August 28, 2024.
