Third party software

[Rolder50]

I mean, this is getting a little ridiculous.

But treating the question seriously...? No, it doesn't count as third-party software.

In the sense it's used in the ToS, third party software almost certainly refers specifically to software which either alters the game process from the intended state (mods, in-game overlays, etc.), alters the game data from the intended state (mods that directly affect the game assets on disk), or extracts information not accessible by any other means.

Moreover -- and this is the key point -- any software the game cannot function without is not unauthorized third-party software, but rather part of the game's base operating requirements.

Windows, in contrast, is the host platform on which the software is designed to run; the Windows version of the game cannot function at all without Windows. (Or some sort of reasonably complete Windows-esque API translation layer, a'la WINE, Proton, Crossover and such.)

If you want to get real technical and nit picky about what their vague definition of third party software means then...

Discord can count by this definition as you can toggle an overlay which appears in game. It's just a list of people who are speaking in the voice channel, but an overlay is an overlay.

ACT Parsing would not count by this definition (with just base functionality installed) as it does not alter the games data and does not alter game assets. It reads network data and computes that into a parse.

[Packetdancer]

If you want to get real technical and nit picky about what their vague definition of third party software means then...

Discord can count by this definition as you can toggle an overlay which appears in game. It's just a list of people who are speaking in the voice channel, but an overlay is an overlay.

ACT Parsing would not count by this definition (with just base functionality installed) as it does not alter the games data and does not alter game assets. It reads network data and computes that into a parse.

Discord hooks DirectX and thus bootstraps its own code into a game to handle the overlay; no question it qualifies.

That said, ACT could easily be said to extract information not otherwise readily available. (Moreover, I think -- though may be wrong on this -- that the FFXIV parsing plugin for ACT not only reads network traffic, but also reads the process' memory space to provide some additional context.)

However, you're not entirely wrong, either; my analogy/definition there probably lacked a few qualifiers. For instance, XIVAlexander does not -- so far as I know, though admittedly I've never poked at that program, much less analyzed its method of working -- directly alter the game [i]process[i], but it sure as heck messes with the game's network traffic.

The key point, though, is that any software which is explicitly stated to be required in order for the software to function in the first place -- e.g. anything in the System Requirements list the publisher puts out, or implicitly included as a result of what's there -- is not going to be "unauthorized third-party software". Saying you need a graphics card capable of DirectX 11, for instance, also implies you need appropriate graphics drivers for that card; the drivers for your Nvidia or AMD card are thus not "unauthorized third-party software".

And the operating system that's explicitly stated as the target environment for a given version of the game -- i.e. Microsoft Windows of at least a specific minimum version, for the Windows version of the game -- is obviously going to be part of the base operating requirements, not "unauthorized third party software".