A Final Fantasy 14 player-run nightclub rented several billboards in the United States to advertise their next event

One of Final Fantasy 14’s player-run nightclubs has bought billboards in Texas and California to advertise an upcoming event.

Update July 6: After 24 hours of what owner Revarious calls “50/50 love and hate” the billboards put up for Final Fantasy 14 nightclub Rain have been taken down. Misinformation and harassment has spread like wildfire online, but the event is still planned to go ahead.

Despite claims online, Revarious says that “no one has been banned” connected to Rain or the billboards, and they have seen “no action from [developer and publisher] Square Enix.” He says that the billboards were taken down because “we kinda listened to the actual FF14 [players] and we don‘t want to stress anyone else in the community out about them staying up and forcing Square Enix’s hand on the matter.”

Revarious also pointed out that many of the screenshots going around on social media were clearly not from members of his team, and were just random people who joined the Discord, as noted by the raindrop icon and red text in their name. “A lot of the trollers joining our discord are not part of any other FF14 discords and are literally just joining from Twitter to troll,” he said.

Naturally there’s also been a lot of hate directed the way of the staff and those they hired to work at the event. “I think the worst part about all this is one of the DJs is really getting attacked,” says Revarious. “It really makes me sad when she isn’t part of rain nightclub or the billboard design idea, we only requested her to play songs for our party.”

The billboards themselves were also a lot cheaper than the $12,000 claim that was made by random people but spread like wildfire because, well, that’s how the internet works. All in, Revarious says they spent $160 USD (about $235 AUD) on two billboards in Texas across the two days. They were paying a daily rate, so taking them down didn’t cost any extra, another rumour that was being spread. The two Californian billboards were cancelled before they were put up. “That $12k price you see is for an entire month, in say a prime location like Times Square or something,” he explains.

“To correct another rumour online I see,” continues Revarious. “We did have a Pride event last month [and] basically everyone is saying we used Pride donation money to pay for [the billboards]. That is incorrect – we took $0 in donations. Instead we set milestones, like our DJ reached 100 views, we donate $100 dollars, or we sell 20 (in-game) drinks from our bar, we donate $20. We paid for all the donations ourselves (staff), the billboard money was taken from our own pockets.” Revarious provided proof of donations to The Trevor Project charity.

The event is still planning to go ahead. “I still get 100‘s of DMs in discord from people telling us to keep or chins up, ignore the trolls, and they are so excited for the event,” says Revarious. “We still want to do it for all of them.”

Given the intent of the billboards was to get attention on their event and maybe make some people laugh, I ask Revarious if this is mission accomplished.

“I’d say we reached more people than we wanted, even [some] people outside the FF14 community who care nothing about FF14, and that’s invited a lot of trolls. I know past the trolls people are genuinely excited for the event, and people can have fun with all the memes online, they don‘t bother us – as long as the false information about us isn’t spread for someone’s 10 seconds of fame on Twitter.”

Original story: A Final Fantasy 14 nightclub named Rain has bought out several very real billboards in the United States to advertise an upcoming event they’re running. While the in-game clubs themselves are not uncommon, several billboards across two states is a new level of advertising they don’t usually go to.

The billboards, one of which was posted on Twitter, were bought by the team that runs the events on the Balmung server, part of the American Crystal data centre. There are two currently live in Austin and Houston, Texas, with more in California likely to go live today, according to the owner of Rain speaking on the club’s Discord server earlier today.

For the uninitiated, Final Fantasy 14’s role-playing and in-game events scene is incredibly popular, with dozens of clubs running every night across its various servers worldwide. Employees – dancers, bartenders, professional roleplayers – are paid with in-game currency, gil, to give the impression of a real place and make it feel alive. DJs stream music on Twitch.tv alongside game footage of folks in the club in-game.

They are usually hosted out of housing owned by a group or individual in-game, giving them control of who is and isn’t in the club, meaning they can kick out troublemakers. On servers like Balmung, the RP hub of FF14, hundreds of people might turn up to one of these events – mostly just for the fun of it.

Rain is relatively new, though a glance at their website (warning, some adult content) and Discord reveals they have all the services you’d expect. The event they’re advertising with the billboards will have large giveaways, several DJs, and no doubt an endless amount of gil sloshing around.

The legality of it all is a grey area, at least as far as publishers Square Enix are concerned. So long as no real-life currency is exchanged, adult activities are kept private (erotic role-play, for example), they mostly turn a blind eye. Of course, the larger an event gets the more careful they need to be about how they advertise, and blatant use of Terms of Service breaking tools – like ones that edit models or costumes, as advertised on Rain’s website – could draw some ire. They might have something to say about using imagery from their game on a billboard, too.

It’s unlikely that your average Texas or California commuter is going to have any idea what this is or why it’s here. However, the press among FF14 players will be worth it, and club owner Revarious explained to me via direct message that the cost of the billboards really wasn’t all that much – and was a great opportunity to “think outside the box.”

“I’d say I giveaway more things to the community off the [in-game store] in two weeks than this whole billboard thing cost us, and we are also still doing all those giveaways at the same time,” he explains. “We just happen to have a lot of very amazing people at Rain where we can do these things and giveaways for the community.”

While the movement of gil around the economy can be fairly expensive, it is gil-only, and FF14 is a game where making money is relatively easy. It’s also not possible to buy gil for real money in any official way, plus clubs like Rain only charge for additional services, usually in the form of RP. In other words, folks who aren’t rich in-game or real life can get something out of places like Rain pretty easily. That’s before, as Revarious mentions, all the giveaways and such.

“I think the feeling of giving someone the new Shiba Inu mount in a contest or giveaway and them being so overjoyed about it because they would never have been able to buy it themselves because money is tight for them, that‘s an amazing feeling,” says Revarious. “I could make their day that much better and help them out.”

He also points out the timing of this particular event is pretty good too. Today, patch 6.18 for the game launched, which includes allowing players to move their characters between data centres, rather than just servers, in their local region. That means a lot more people with access to Balmung, and thus the Rain nightclub – folks who might be more likely to see an advertisement for it on a billboard than their home server.

As noted on the billboard, this Saturday at 8pm CST (11am Sunday, Sydney time) is when the Summer Bash will take place. You’ll need a character on a US data centre, ideally on Crystal’s Balmung itself, of at least level 5 (which doesn’t take long to achieve) to get to The Mist. I hope everyone attending has a good time.

Written by GLHF.