FFXIV free trial expands to Shadowbringers on April 28 with Patch 7.5

FINAL FANTASY XIV expands its free trial on Tuesday, April 28, when Patch 7.5 goes live and adds Shadowbringers to the no-subscription entry path. Square Enix posted the change on the Lodestone and said it applies both to new free-trial users and to players who previously registered FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn on their accounts. The change lands immediately with the patch rather than as a vague future promise.

The practical detail matters. Square Enix says service accounts will be updated starting on April 28, and the new registration status may not appear on Mog Station right away. That means players should expect some delay between the patch rollout and the account page reflecting the higher free-trial ceiling. For an MMO with a heavy onboarding cost, that caveat is small compared with the headline: one of the game's biggest expansions moves into the free bucket.

The announcement does not bundle in a new pricing model or remove the long-standing split between free-trial accounts and paid accounts. That distinction came through clearly in the Reddit thread. Some players celebrated Shadowbringers as one of the strongest MMO expansions of the past decade, while others complained that once an account has gone paid, it still cannot simply fall back to the free-trial track without resubscribing or starting over. In other words, the offer gets better, but the account rules stay strict.

For Square Enix, the timing lines up neatly with Patch 7.5 and gives the company a concrete acquisition beat without discounting the full game. For players who bounced off earlier or never started, the barrier to entry is lower as of April 28. The real effect will show up over the next few weeks: more new-character traffic, more returning trial users, and more pressure on Square Enix to explain clearly which account histories qualify and which do not.