During a livestream for the upcoming Patch 5.2, the director of Final Fantasy XIV, Naoki Yoshida, commented on the use of mods and other third-party tools.
What is this about? In the FFXIV community, mods have gained significant popularity over the years. They drastically alter the appearance of equipment and characters.
Players obtain outfits, hairstyles, and other assets that do not exist in the game. Or they gain access to items that are not available to them, such as items that must be purchased in the cash shop or earned in very difficult content.
Screenshots of such mods are circulated on the internet, and the director of Final Fantasy XIV has now asked the community to refrain from using these mods.
No mods or other third-party tools
What does Yoshida say? In the producer’s letter, Yoshida stated that mods and other third-party tools are prohibited in FFXIV. The use of them is not a grey area, as some players in the community had claimed, but is explicitly not allowed.
In some countries, screenshots with modded content are even illegal and violate applicable laws.
We don’t want people asking us: “From which game are these screenshots even? Change the code so that it’s no longer possible!”.
Naoki Yoshida
Yoshida also emphasized that the use of other third-party tools is not allowed. He specifically referred to the DPS meter ACT and tools that access the code of Final Fantasy XIV.
The head of the MMORPG stated:
We cannot check if people have a small window open that shows them ACT. We also don’t want to “scan” your PCs, apart from it being illegal.
But there are additional plugins for ACT that can heavily influence the game. This breaks the balance of the game and will be punished more severely.
Yoshida mentions the ACT triggers that scan the log during combat and for example predict which attacks are coming next. This allows players to master raids more easily.
There are also videos of addons that make normally invisible AOE attacks from bosses visible, making them significantly easier. The use of these will also be harshly punished, according to Yoshida.
While ACT itself remains a grey area, because unlike other programs it does not modify the code but only reads it, Yoshida still asked players to refrain from using it.
In the end, he emphasized once again that an internal DPS meter in Final Fantasy XIV is out of the question, as it would lead to too much toxic behavior.
Trouble in the Japanese community
This was the first incident: Both ACT and the mods have been around for a very long time among FFXIV players. The fact that Yoshida is insisting on this now can be attributed to several incidents that have occurred in the Japanese community in recent months.
The first was related to the race for the world-first kill of the ultimate battle against Alexander. The group that accomplished the fight first received anonymous death threats.
They were accused of cheating and using information obtained through data mining. Square Enix responded by banning several well-known data miners, but officially recognized the group’s victory.
This was the second incident: Another incident reportedly revolved around player Dingo and his use of mods. According to a Reddit post aiming to bring attention to the events, he was actively hunted by a group from the Japanese community.
Comments like the following circulated:
- He is a sinner and is trying to destroy FFXIV
- Mods are against the TOS and he deserves to be punished
- Yoshida will remove the G-Pose function if modded screenshots continue to be taken.
Players have tracked Dingo in-game and on social media, and also harassed people who played with him. He became outcast and systematically isolated. He was apparently also wished death several times.
The same group allegedly also tried to attack Western players who posted modded screenshots publicly, according to a Reddit user’s account.
In both cases, there has been a lot of trouble in the Japanese community, which has apparently also caught the attention of Square Enix.
