Final Fantasy 14 suspends housing demolition on North American servers after Hurricane Helene causes devastating damage across multiple states

Final Fantasy 14 has put a stop to its automatic housing demolition across its North American servers following the massive destruction caused by Hurricane Helene across multiple states in late September.

Usually, if the game detects that you haven't entered your in-game house in the last 45 days, Square Enix comes along with the bulldozer and strips you of your ownership so another player has a chance to claim the land. But for the foreseeable future, that timer is paused for any players on the Aether, Crystal, Dynamis, and Primal data centres. 

A post on the Lodestone reads: "From all of us on the FF14 development and management team, our hearts go out to those who were affected late last month by Hurricane Helene in North America. Due to the damages and other factors, we have decided to temporarily suspend the automatic demolition of estates."

The timer was suspended in the early hours of the morning on October 2. Whenever Square Enix flicks the auto demolition switch back on, the timer will resume from wherever it was prior to the suspension. So if you've not entered your house for 30 days right now, it'll still be that way when auto demolition is back.

The aftermath of the hurricane is still unfolding, with CNN reporting at least 162 people having died across six states. It's the second-deadliest hurricane the US has seen in the last 50 years, behind Hurricane Katrina. As it stands, hundreds of thousands of people are without power, hundreds of roads are closed and there are concerns around access to safe water in places like North Carolina and Tennessee.

It's not the first time Final Fantasy 14 has deactivated its in-game eviction notices due to real-world events. Japanese servers had housing demolition suspended back in January following the major 7.5 Noto earthquake that claimed the lives of 401 people and injured over a thousand more. A year prior to that saw European servers have their demolition timer switched off due to the Türkiye-Syria earthquake. Of course, it was also frozen worldwide during the pandemic too.