Square Enix has a very lengthy post over on the official Final Fantasy XIV website, where producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, Naoki Yoshida, takes full blame for the poor release of the Mac version of the popular MMO and explains why sales are temporarily suspended.

The game suffers massive performance issues on Mac because of misinformation let loose from Square about what sort of hardware would be required to make the game run proper. Quite naturally, plenty of people purchased a digital copy of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn only to find that the game doesn’t run on their hardware.

According to Yoshida…

“While the development and operations teams, as well as our entire company, were involved in this mistake, it was I who ultimately made the decision to release the Mac version under these circumstances and therefore bear sole responsibility, and I sincerely apologize to you all. “Because of this situation, many of you purchased a product which your Mac hardware could not run at even the minimum system requirements, resulting in insufficient performance, for which many of you have expressed your dissatisfaction. Had we provided accurate information beforehand, I know many of you would not have purchased the Mac version, which is why we decided to offer full refunds. Once again, I apologize.”

The post goes through the painstaking detail to explain exactly what the hold up was with the Mac version, the miscommunication between various tech departments that ended up funking up the system requirements and leading to a lot of disappointed fans.

Given that gamers who can’t play a game are likely to pepper a Steam page with negative reviews and a request for a refund, Square Enix took the initiative to pull the game before the page became littered with reviews that would mark the user perception of the game as “Overwhelmingly Negative”.

Yoshida further adds that the customer dissatisfaction is what prompted them to pull the game from being sold to Mac users from participating digital distributors…

We have judged that there is still a lack of information on the Mac version and its system requirements. We are planning to make an announcement which will include detailed information on the product, system requirements, and screen resolution. Until this is done, and I am personally satisfied that our users are adequately informed, we will be suspending the sale of the Mac version.”

This marks another recent high-profile game having sales pulled from digital distribution following consumer outrage.

Warner Bros encountered the same problem with Batman: Arkham Knight, where the game on PC was so ill-received amongst PC gamers and the refunds were so high that they opted to simply pull the game from being sold digitally for PC.

Warner Bros and Rocksteady are currently hard at work trying to fix a broken Dark Knight.

In the case of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (and subsequently Heavensward) Yoshida states that they’ll be working hard to fix the game as intended so that they can resume sales across their digital distribution partners, closing out the lengthy post, stating…

“The mistakes made by the development and operation teams in the lead up to this release have caused considerable confusion and trouble. To our customers who eagerly anticipate purchasing, or who have already ordered, their copy of the Mac version of FINAL FANTASY XIV, and to all of our distributors, we offer our deepest and most heartfelt apologies.”

You can read the full post over on the official Final Fantasy XIV website.