- Recently, a FFXIV mod that enables stalking behavior in the MMO was released.
- FFXIV director Yoshi-P has responded, suggesting Square Enix may take legal action.
- However, the vulnerability that lets the mod work is seemingly not being addressed.
Weeks after the emergence of a new mod for Final Fantasy 14 (FFXIV) that enables stalking behavior alarmed large portions of the MMO’s community, developer Square Enix has finally responded to the matter officially.
The company’s statement comes from a post by FFXIV director Naoki Yoshida (known colloquially by the nickname “Yoshi-P”) on the game’s official forums. In it, he confirms that Square Enix is aware of the mod’s existence and is “discussing” either requesting a takedown or “pursuing legal action,” while also reassuring players that the plugin can’t be used to obtain personal information and reaffirming the studio’s “firm stance” against the usage of third-party tools.
“We have confirmed that there exist third-party tools that are being used to check FFXIV character information that is not displayed during normal game play,” reads the statement. “The Development and Operations teams are aware of the situation and the concerns being raised by the community … The use of third-party tools is prohibited by the FINAL FANTASY XIV User Agreement and their usage could threaten the safety of players. We will continue to take a firm stance against their usage.”
As Yoshi-P touches on in the post, the mod in question works by scraping your internal account ID from the FFXIV client and uploading it to a database where it’s matched with characters attached to the same ID. This means that people using the plugin can easily see that your “alt characters” — new characters often made to get an in-game stalker off your tail, among other reasons — belong to you, thus circumventing one of the only surefire ways to deal with stalkers in the MMO.
Something crucial to note, though, is that the mod only works because of a vulnerability introduced with the launch of the Dawntrail expansion last summer. When Dawntrail came out, Square Enix overhauled FFXIV’s notoriously lackluster blacklisting system with a change that made blacklisting someone also block them on all their other characters. As I’m sure you can guess, this new blacklist functionality hooks into account ID data to work, and the way the developers implemented it left it open to being gathered by third-party mods. In short: by trying to make the game safer with a better blacklist tool, the studio ironically made it easier for dedicated stalkers willing to install mods to do their thing.
It’s frustrating, then, that nothing in Yoshi-P’s statement here suggests Square Enix is working to address this glaring problem. That means that even if the author of the current mod willingly takes it offline or is forced to do so by a lawsuit, there’s nothing stopping someone else from potentially developing a similar plugin (and likely distributing it around far, far less publicly). Other FFXIV players agree; the top comment on a r/ffxivdiscussion post about Square Enix’s response reads, “Fixing the game to break the mod isn’t on the list of options they’re considering I see.”
You can make the argument that the developer should implement some sort of anti-cheat, but doing so would upset huge swathes of the FFXIV community that frequently use beneficial and ultimately harmless mods like damage trackers, cosmetic add-ons, decoration helpers for player housing, and the like. Square Enix has always had a sort of non-spoken “keep quiet about it in-game and it’s fine” agreement with all the raiders and roleplayers that use plugins despite the fact they violate the game’s User Agreement, and I wouldn’t be surprised if completely preventing their use with a blanket solution resulted in thousands leaving the realm of Eorzea for good.
Indeed, that seems like it would be an excessively heavy-handed approach. In my view, Square Enix needs to retool its revamped blacklisting feature so that it doesn’t expose account ID information. Not only would this completely prevent this mod from working now, but it would also prevent programs like them from being developed later — something court threats or deletion requests won’t do.
Final Fantasy XIV is one of the biggest and best MMOs you can play today, with an amazing “theme park” narrative, a vibrant world, and bustling communities for roleplaying, raiding, and more. It’s quickly become one of the best PC games I’ve ever played since I started in 2023, and thanks to a recent release on Microsoft’s consoles, it’s also one of the best Xbox games for MMO enjoyers, too. Its generous free trial allows you to play through the base game and its first two expansions without paying a cent, though you’ll be missing out on features like trading, several chat options, the ability to join guild-like Free Companies, and others.
