Square Enix is asking players to donate back the money they earned from the infamous housing lottery situation.
Earlier in the year, Square Enix introduced the housing lottery system in Final Fantasy 14, which was put in place to try and stabilise the housing economy, as players were struggling to get access to land, especially with some using bots to get an advantage. The lottery system allowed players to put in a bid for the house and the winner would randomly be chosen. This sounds like a good idea, but thanks to several glitches, it was completely broken and remained that way for several months until eventually being fixed.
One of the major glitches was that players weren't getting refunded if they didn't win the lottery, essentially meaning they were just wasting it on nothing. On the flip side, some players were actually winning houses and getting refunded, something that Square Enix previously confirmed that it was going to look into getting back. Now, it's revealed how it's going to tempt lucky players into giving back the money - posters.
In the Patch 6.2 notes, Square Enix has detailed a method where it's asking players to donate any money that they might have unfairly earned from the housing lottery glitches, offering up some in-game items as a reward for doing so. The items shown are three posters that look to be new house furnishings. Two of the posters have Namazu on them, while the third has a Lalafell.
The patch notes read, "To address a recent issue with the housing lottery system, an NPC by which players may voluntarily return the deposit they were accidentally refunded has been added. Players may speak with the Housing Lottery Clerk in Empyreum to voluntarily return their deposit. The amount returned will be compensated with an exchange of an item."
It's a pretty amusing way of asking players to donate the money back, and it's interesting that the team didn't just force players who got lucky from the glitch to give the Gil back. On the idea, Naoki Yoshida previously said, "As these housing lottery issues have been significant and caused great stress and frustration in many players, we have no intention of performing a data rollback to forcibly rescind any refunded gil".