What is Japan saying about the Mod Controversy (Continued)?
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- We're back at this topic again...
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YoshiP's response doesn't address the underlying issue at the moment. It is however impressive that he specifically called out the problem plugin itself and not a blanket on all which would have caused a catastrophic meltdown and panic. This is about as close as we'll get to any acknowledgement of their value for the community. Github can prevent forks from being uploaded but all that will do will drive it elsewhere and out of the hands of easy control. They don't have Nintendo-tier lawyers so until account data is removed client-side the problem will persist. I'm just glad that there's a statement at all, personally.
Ooof idk, am I the only one who thinks YoshiP's response was correct(-ish)? I'm far, far from a YoshiP's almost religious fan, or FFXIV's for that matter, I just appreciate that he addresses the players as adults who have their own agency, and doesn't act in a patronizing way, e.g. "Please stop developing plugins that are hurtful" vs. "I'll take actions on your behalf and ban stuff and enforce how you'll experience the game, because you can't take care of yourself".
I absolutely accept that if something is exploitable, it _will_ be exploited by someone with 100% certainty, (which is why the fault is basically SE's for making this AccountID public in the first place), and so asking people to not do it is completely futile. I also recognize I haven't been stalked to a degree that I'd have an actual use of the blacklist feature, so my point of view is very different from someone who genuinely is being harmed by their AccountID being public.
It's just that YoshiP's reply felt more like he's trying to reach across to adults, when in almost all other MMOs, in similar cases the playerbase is considered a child where actions must be taken on his/her behalf. Or I'm just being too naive, idk.
Something worth noting is that the only way to play 14 on the steamdeck (without installing windows over SteamOS) is using the unofficial launcher as square's native linux support is lacking, at least, last time I checked.
Square's official Linux support doesn't exist to begin with.
I'm able to run 14 on my Steam Deck and I'm not using Windows or the unofficial launcher. Though I'm using the Steam version of FF14
I've seen that multiple times with Japanese companies, Sony being a prime example of this for a lot of their divisions.
1. JP company releases a flawed product (from the customers point of view).
2. Enthusiastic users find ways to work around the flaws and early adopters recommend the product to others "but with some fixes".
3. JP company goes "wait no, you're supposed to accept the flaws, we're proud of them, please stop and be a good silent but paying customer".
4. Users on the sidelines who were expecting the company to implement more official ways for the workarounds understand that it's never gonna happen and start using the workarounds too.
5. JP company stays silent, hoping that it will pass, or threaten legal action.
6. The workarounds start being seen by the whole user base as a necessity, and some users push things way further than the initial enthusiastic users would have gone.
7. JP company starts using the (technical or legal) hammer to stop the workarounds (we may be there soon with FFXIV).
8. Disappointed users leave the product and criticize very loudly the JP company, with the backlash reaching what would have been potential clients who will now avoid the product.
9. JP company is dumbfounded about what just happened, has to fire a bunch of people and dogeza to their investors, but will repeat the same mistakes for their next product (if its product type isn't completely canned to appease investors).
All CS3 had to do was to provide an official API to allow for safe user addons, and keep important stuff server-side.
You can't tell me macros are enough, they don't even provide conditional statements, and allowed things like custom menus are just a string of ugly hacks (copying unused class toolbars for each click, really?).
EDIT:
CS3 can't ignore that many users ended up finding "that tool" because they didn't want to enter their password at each game launch, especially on Steam Deck, but the studio never did anything to "patch" that natural path to external tools.
Mods are illegal in Japan if i recall correctly.
I think it would alienate their own local audience if they allow modding for everywhere else in the world, except them.
But they could always use a loop hole and not call it a mod but "community enhancement" or whatever.
@Geekezf I think what's forbidden in Japan is the unauthorized modification of copyrighted files, and that's often extended to "modding".
Usual FFXIV modding doesn't change any game file, it just manipulates computer memory and sideloads new data.
@Ruzgfpegk You might be right!
11:00 If you have a rule and then do not punish someone for breaking it, you are saying you don't have a rule.
These same business men might understand it better if it impacted them or could be put into a different context they might understand better. How about I pay them a visit and not take my shoes off as I enter their home? It's not a crime, it's simply a rule in their culture. If they were to not correct my behaviour, what they are saying is my behaviour is allowed. They would also surely seek to correct my behaviour and not just let it slide, so why are they choosing to do so with FF14? They should very well know if a rule is only on paper and is never actually enforced, it's not a rule. It's a suggestion, and suggestions only stop the honest.
Changing the game/servers so it stops broadcasting acount IDs client side is how they fix this. That would take dev time, and money, and there's already no money in the budget, so they probably won't bother. Despite being the game that keeps SE alive, they simply refuse to invest back into it.
There are other resources more complicated to allocate than money. If it was just something they could throw money at, they probably would as it wouldn't be that expensive to revert the blacklist feature, but it probably requires someone very familiar with the game stopping something else to fix it, which would then push that other thing back. They will probably end up reverting the blacklist change eventually, but they will have to do processes to even figure out what type of solution they want to do before work starts.
@@spooked1090 They'd need to allocate time and budget to hire people to do that work. SE doesn't want to do that. They want to buy more NFTs instead.
@@chrisguillenart Aye, I don't understand it when people say "it's not about the money" in such cases. It _absolutely_ is about the money. Allocating time and staff on something can be fixed with money and money alone when you're such a huge company. Usually, when management says "It's not about the money" it means "It's about the money, just not the amount we're prepared to spend to fix it". In such technical matters there's almost literally nothing that can't be fixed by throwing enough money at it. In this specific case, it's a matter of: a) Implement a new blacklist system, b) Stop broadcasting AccountIDs and tagging each character and retainer with it, c) Change the current AccountIDs since they're compromised. None of those steps is above enough money.
Thx Vimi for keeping us updated on what the Japanese community is saying about this situation, It’s so sad that this happened when XIV was already facing a low point In It’s life and the fact that this exploit could have been prevented as It was found all the way back at DT’s launch. But alas…
I guess the best thing to do at this point Is watch It play out and see what SE does.
It's unlikely that the Dev team didn't know that handling the blacklist like this client side was not extremely risky. So I suspect that the server infrastructure and code is such that it could not handle the additional load without major upgrades and updates. This is the same system that takes 5 minutes to load your friend list! They're going to have to put a halt to whatever they are working on to fix this, including changing all of the player account ids that have been exposed by this!
If they didn't realize that it was a risk then that seems equally as bad. They need to hire an external cyber security provider for consulting cos wtf.
@@closurehascomex Agreed! Security specialist are going to see things that the typical dev doesn't even think about.
And while changing the Blacklist, finally change how friendlist works and if someone is unfriended, forcibly remove the friendlist entry from the other party, too.
You can scrape Player IDs using the dalamund launcher itself. Dont need the plugin.
No one will mention that though.
Run game with launcher
type /xldata in chatbox
Screenpops up left side towards bottom is "target"
Click that then click a player.
Right side fills up with their data. Towards middle bottom is Account ID.
More tedious but a tool has already been written to use just the launcher to scrape player IDs now from just using the dalmund launcher. Dont even need the plugin causing all the controversy.
I don't get the fear of being stalked in a video game, they act like it's irl stalking.
@@elgatochurro there has been examples using this game where stalkers in game were able to determine irl schedules and show up in person to harass/attack the people they were stalking. I'm glad you dont understand the fear of online stalking, it doesn't mean it isn't a serious and harmful issue.
@HisKuren I literally don't see that, they know where you live at that point
@@elgatochurro It can be used to narrow down timezones based off work and sleep times. This can make it drastically easier to dox you. And that is just the first, easiest example that comes to mind. After that you can get into social engineering and manipulation, or eavesdropping on all public conversations to start building a profile. If you can learn someone's profession is a fisherman, or a doctor, or a construction worker if tehy mention it, then again you can cut down the pool of possible people. And you can just keep going and going. People shouldn't have to be paranoid about everything they say in game possibly getting scraped up. Cyber stalking makes this orders of magnitude worse. Fortunately party chat and tells, and other more privilaged chat channels mitigate this, but how many people never discuss OOC stuff in public chats? And is that a reasonable ask? What if you never mention anything in /say, but your friends say, "Oh yeah, Y is a waitress, so they have good customer service skills". You have to be careful. But I the stalking with people actively trying to doxx you and harass you adds a whole different level of care that needs to be taken.
With the Live Letter coming up relatively soon, I'm hopeful that this issue is address there in more detail. Any word on what possible actions they could be taking in regards to the new Blacklist system would be appreciated.
Great info thanks for the coverage.
Taking the mod down is good, but it's already in the wild, that's only going to thwart the less technically savvy. If someone really wants to get their hands on it, they'll be able to. The only real solution is for SE to actually patch out the hole in their security.
I'm not coming back until the the actual exploit in game is fixed. Simple as that. Yoshi-p does not express any intention to do that.
"Please don't stalk, uwu 🥺 it's not nice" is how the response comes off to me.
Odd that still to this day some players dont know about this spyware drama, do they even watch ff14 content?
Thank you for covering this Vimi, your the best!!! 👍
Might need to redesign the blacklist and game code, and no anti-cheat isn't going to work cause how every anti-cheat can be defeat by a modder with information. Once a modder do this information is share and will be a cat and mouse like how youtube is trying to kill off adblocker and we all know how that going right now.
Playing cat and mouse with an MMO account that could be 10-11 years old is not something any sane person would do.
Just enforcing the ToS would push a lot of people away from using Plugins.
@@sadmiqoxiv This is fine for a lot of stuff, but stuff like this that is such a huge security concern needs a change to the blacklist code. This is info that should never have been leaked. I genuinely believe that no security team member ever even glanced through this, or they are so grossly incompetent they should be fired on the spot. And I say this as someone that rarely advocates for firing as the first option as I prefer to teach team members and foster learning and growth. But this is that bad. Someone that would sign off on this should not have this position.
I think Square Enix is going to do something very keklol worthy, and not do anything very satisfying because their good at doing that. Very cute art by the way, thank you for the video.
There is also alot of misinformation going on. While the tool is very intrusive letting you see last visited places, alt characters and retainer names, it does not allow viewing of payment information, adresses or any other data. The game allows many of these things already through their own systems like the search function and already established and widely used plugins. While I am not defending it I do think people are very much blowing parts of this plugin up to be worse than it is
Gotta farm drama and fear mongering.
I want to know how many of these people cares when they connected their device to any public wi-fi.
All hats available for viera and hrothgar is not even the bare minimum at this point
There is a difference between mods and cheating. Most people that use mods are just catering to their fantasy and cosmetics. Now tools like ACT or the tool in question just cause problems and foster fear. It’s a complex issue that won’t be solved for a while
It sets a dangerous precedent if Yoshi-P did something directly to the modding community. Square Enix already has a weird history with modders in their games for "World First Races". Even Yoshi-P wants to crack down on this Mod specifically he has to approach every Mod the same way. They can't keep avoiding the conversation. Are we allowed to Mod or not?
We are not allowed to mod and never have been. They have *always* said this and it has been in the TOS since day one. It's not a dangerous precedent at all, it's something they should be doing in the first place.
@@vimimi Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut..
some plugins are god sent and improve so massively the QoL of the game.
(And some cosmetic mods actually improve the game to, for Hrotghar and Viera)
If FFXIV's team ADD those QoL plugins in the game, step by step alone ,i would drop plugin asap.
Same for cosmetic mods
@@vimimiYou didn't seem to understand what I meant. They haven't been clear about Modding in many different ways. They have in fact said many contradictory things over the years that make that point moot and outdated. They do allow mods just not publicly and that's even more confusing. They have said "We don't want Mods" but they've also said "But if you use them don't worry nothing bad will happen if you don't tell us".
So again I HAVE to ask "Are we allowed to Mod or not?" Because in most players opinions Modding should've been in the game since Day 1. But they're against it in a way that doesn't make sense because it's even allowing worlds first to be claimed using Mods. So you really can't blame me when the logic of these decisions doesn't make sense. You're claiming they're totally against Mods because that's what the service agreement says but that's not the reality of what these Devs tell Players directly. They basically do allow Mods but in this really weird limited sense. No idea why.
FF14 also surprisingly has a shit budget despite being the highest grossing game for Square Enix. They rather take those FF14 dollars and burn them with failed projects rather than inject it back into FF14. It was designed to be low budget...
they will never change anything, i belive they dont want to change anything because the percentage of players that use addons or mods now is way to big to where if they block them (and if they block 1 they have to block all of them) people will just quit and that has the possibility to cut the player base by 50% and also some addons do things they shouldv done by now so they feel they dont need to do em, i really dont envy the position their in for something like 8.0 for example all the things they gotta address that sprung from DTs down sides and also coming through with the promised 8.0 job overhaul that they consider the biggest selling point
While it's nice that SE is actually acknowledging the issue, I agree that they still refuse to see the elephant in the room which is they need to police mods to some extent. To have this "don't do it, tee hee" and have no hammer unless there's some major issue with mods with world first or streams, shows that SE is still very resistant to wanting to fix this issue. SE needs to take a firm stance on mods and either incorporate the mods that help 14 and/or actively move to ban the more malicious mods.
If they trickled some of that internet money from World First matches that get cheated with and will never be recognized officially, maybe we'd get the fixes we actually NEED, lol.
@@mister_ious
No matter how they would solve this, it would hit those who are not malicious in use, the malicious users would double down.
And yes, a parser is malicious, even a 'self only'. YoshiP did elaborate on that a few expansions ago. If they add an internal parser that can not be seen by others, you will have demands of 'show me parser or kick'. So the only way is to remove the combat log functionality in total, remove showing of damage numbers on screen (so no screengrabbing can happen), and basically, remove clientside feedback to the players in general.
Personally, it kinda upsets me to see how the community backlash on Yoshi-P for something they implemented with genuine intention to help people. Every single comment is all about how Yoshi-P screwed up, how they're dissatisfied with this response.....without really contributing to the solution. Even for myself whom does not have programming nor IT background, has a vague understanding how the blacklist system works, and why they might be struggling to find a perfect workaround that does not have any compromise involved. But all the backlash is just people spewing nonsense like "just make it server-side", or "why does blacklist not work in two-way street", making them look even more ignorant than ever. Granted, the social systems in FFXIV is really outdated for a MMORPG, but man it hurts to see people shit on devs for attempting to do something out of genuine good intentions.
I’d say it’s because this should be common sense by now to these companies. So many issues have existed with other MMO’s or programs because some information was client-sided. It would be one thing if it’s an up and coming indie but 14 isn’t an indie company
Tbh it's valid at this point because some of us have tried to tell them about these things through proper channels, but they refuse to take action, nor listen. But I blame the company as a whole, no need for him to shoulder all that burden alone, lol. People give devs a lot of flack cuz they'll be the 1st to question your IQ while simultaneously telling you that they can't do a thing they went to college for because 'Spaghetti code". Like stop coding with pasta then...geez..
@@cutejustice How did you think the blacklist system was able to work the way how it was in FFXIV then? Every other MMO has a so-called "blacklist" but they were simply nothing more than just a mute function. The reason why you could erase someone's existence from your gamplay was precisely because it works on the client side. The severity of a blacklist is simply "this person annoys me I only want to have him removed from showing up in my game", not "this person is stalking and harassing me I want to have him removed", which the latter should've warranted a GM report ticket not just a blacklist addition.
Your comment is just another example of those that doesn't really contribute to the solution. I find that people whom lauds "Square Enix should've known better" are extremely hypocritical. If 'Square Enix should've known better', most PC players would've already been banned for breaking the game a long time ago.
@@mister_ious I don't think you understand what spaghetti code means. Spaghetti code exists because the programming language starts to break old functions after adding newer complex features. If there's a prime example of a spaghetti code, just look at how the Dawntrail expansion broke the fishing feature in Eastern Thanalan when it was released. I have no programming background, but this is basically my understanding of spaghetti coding : The more stuff you add, the more stuff you break.
Lots of players lauded how amazing Shadowbringers was, which I suspect, is one of the expansions that generates the most amount spaghetti code in the FFXIV client. You guys are praising the most of the expansion, that probably creates the biggest mess in this game.
They did it to help people but they did it in such a half-assed way (client side handling of blacklist) that they either 1) knew this was going to eventually happen but didn’t care, or 2) their devs were so incompetent that they didn’t see this coming. They were passing the accountIDs unencrypted between the server and client. What did they think would happen?? All they had to do to avoid this was ENCRYPT the accountID string.
The mod scene for ff14 has gone haywire and off the chain since Endwalker with a slow startup in Shadowbringers (Though they always existed) and Dalamud being one of of major mod tools that easily allows anyone to get into the mod scene for the game. There was no enforcement or crackdown on these mods less someone reports them and luckily gets them banned for any proof. Thus we have entered the era of the mod scene as "So long as we are not hurting the game directly we are fine, right?" moments.
I feel as if it is def the team afraid of outright Issuing a C&D or directly taking action against the people behind mods like Dalamud because they know (In the western world at least) a lot of their playerbase would jump ship but I for one am firm in the belief that if you only played FF14 because of mods to completely overhaul the character design and artstyle of the game to make your character look not Final Fantasy, you shouldn't be playing Final Fantasy 14 to begin with as games like IMVU and Second Life are right around the corner.
However the real grey talk of mods for me is always utility and certain mods DO make the game better, but I pray if they do ever take mods down they will implement some of the mods used by a majority as lighter versions or features.
but It's like going into a Sandwich shop to order their special sandwich, then at the table you shove hamburger patties, obscene amounts of ketchup and mustard among other things that the shop does not provide when if you wanted a hamburger, it is literally a few doors down. You're ruining a perfectly good sandwich because you want a hamburger.
I'm not even going to lie, if I can't mod the game, I'm not playing it. Mods make the game 10x more enjoyable.
Good luck finding a new barbie simulator
@@BaithNa There is one that has been around since the 2000's called Second Life.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out
they fixed the controller bug for macs in patch 7.16.
they will patch the vulnerability, eventually.
Just make a Data Center that is more strict & will ban if you use mods on that specific Data Center where everyone knows. Or give us a Console Only Data Center..
Between the horrible lewd stuff, the rampant battle content cheating, parsing toxicity, and now this, I'm almost at the point where I'd welcome an anti-cheat. It's plain that a huge chunk of the playerbase don't return their carts at the grocery store, so to speak. I never used anything more than base ACT with only damage meters, but I've stopped using even that.
The game is only alive at this point due to “that horrible lewd stuff”
@@jgrathwohl1 Yeah, it's a good point, and I've seen it before. The thing is it feels like we're reaching a breaking point. Part of me wonders the people who say they'll quit if they don't have their mods actually have the discipline to carry that out. Many gaming boycotts didn't stick. Hopefully the situation will calm down and we'll never have to find out.
I think this is definitely an over simplification of what kind of mods and plugins exist.
Some of them are joke mods, some of them are utility and quality of life that makes an otherwise unplayable experience for many, playable. Its not a black and white issue. I think people just want freedom over their own experiences at the end of the day.
@@prod.arcsyne2990 Don't get me wrong, I agree. Many of these mods are incredibly helpful and creative. I've watched videos showcasing them, and I have friends who have showed them off to me in Discord streams. What I'm saying is I'm nearing the point where I conclude we just can't have nice things and accept having them all blocked rather than turning a blind eye to the bad ones.
@@Xaelrothand loose a chunk of players because enix fricked up on there side ye seems fair
the system is in the game and anybody can make a self use plugin and just not making it public access.
i used to join a local discord that claims they are official and making rules blah blah blah to deem legit but yeah they are in fact third party lol
SE is way too laid back on 3rd party tools/hack usage in ff14 😠 😡
Funny part its either all mods or no mods meaning we need to get rid of act. The line really needs to be drawn cause damn ppl are stupid as fuck
TOS/EULA already says no mods what so ever. That is the line that was drawn... Square Enix simply didn't stop anyone from crossing it, or punish anyone that did and now they've got a mess on their hands. They were lazy and the players are paying for it.
@@Stephen__White And as long as combat logs or damage numbers exist, you might not be able to do real time parsing, but ACT has a log crawler for both 'delayed' parsing an open logfile, or post run parsing the logfile.
So they would have to get rid of combat log functionality, including the chat states that you have in the 'Battle' tab of your chat. And you might have to remove on screen number feedback too, since you can have screengrabbing features that look for numbers in given colors and piece a parse together from that. So no 'Floating Combat Text' either.
Ban 3rd party tools and mods, simple.
This is a netcode issue more than anything. It's very bad in general 😢
The unofficial launcher wouldn't have to exist if the official launcher let us remember out details to login without having to put in out passwords every time. It's small things that go a long way, and them dragging their heels to do simple things other companies have done decades ago is wild.