Cracked.com did a pretty hilarious telling of what happened in FF14
The game was an accidental parody of its own genre. Every system was so incomplete, broken, or boring that the only reason to keep playing was to keep increasing your level. Sitting at a calculator typing "+1" would have provided exactly the same gameplay experience with far fewer crashes. Within three months, the game's producer and director had been publicly booted from the project, with producer Hiromichi Tanaka claiming full public responsibility for the failure. The only reason they didn't livestream themselves committing seppuku is that it's impossible to reverse a Final Fantasy sword without at least three cargo cranes and warning nearby aircraft.
Square Enix tried to fix the game for two full years. They extended the trial period twice, begging people to play for free. Entire consoles were abandoned, because releasing new versions of the game would be like releasing fresh shits in the dock of your public obscenity trial. The only reason they didn't abandon it entirely was that the game had done potentially terminal damage to the brand. This launch achieved what over a dozen dragons and angry gods couldn't, threatening to make this the actual Final Fantasy. Square Enix finally surrendered with a final update that crashed the moon into the virtual world, releasing the Primal Dragon Bahamut, thereby triggering the Seventh Umbral Calamity.
Which was pretty much what was happening to their reputation. They went back to start making the game all over again with an entirely new team and the president of Square Enix pledging to take personal responsibility. Finally, in August 2013, they released Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, aka FF14: We're Really Really Really Sorry. The game's plot was almost a direct representation of the brand, with players working to rebuild the world after the utter devastation wrought by the previous title.