Back in 2016, Square Enix released a fantastic version of Final Fantasy 9 ($20.99) for iOS. Final Fantasy 9 went from being the game never released on another platform to being ported to just about everything in recent years. It even got a Nintendo Switch version that sadly isn’t as good as the other platforms. As is the case with Square Enix and iOS updates, Final Fantasy 9 had issues in recent versions of iOS beginning with iOS 14.5 as far as I remember. Since then, the game was unplayable and hasn’t worked since. Square Enix has now pulled it from the App Store. The good news is that Square Enix has confirmed that it is “urgently" working on a fix. The company also says that this might take some time to fix. Square Enix has had a few instances in the past on iOS where a game was broken for a long time before a fix arrived. The World Ends With You is the best example of this.

If you own Monster Hunter Freedom Unite for iOS, that game had the same issue as Final Fantasy 9 where it was not playable on iOS 14.5 and later. Sadly, Capcom confirmed before that Monster Hunter Freedom Unite will no longer be supported. Square Enix really needs to get better at supporting its premium games on iOS. Multiple great premium ports from Square Enix hit iOS and Android just this year and it sucks that there’s uncertainty on whether these will work in a few years. You can’t expect people to keep buying these premium priced ports with no clarity on whether they will work beyond an iOS and iPadOS release. Either way, if you were wondering what is going on with Final Fantasy 9 on iOS, it will be back at some point. Hopefully it doesn’t need to be delisted again in the future. Final Fantasy 9 on iOS was my favourite portable version of the game and I hope it returns soon. If you’ve not gotten it on iOS and are wondering how the port is (or was before it got delisted), check out Shaun’s review here. Did you buy Final Fantasy 9 on iOS or did you play it on something else?