We anticipate that even with this update, third parties will continue

[Shibi]

...And it's not like their decision doesn't harm them. Square Enix isn't stupid. It wasn't Yoshida who randomly came up with the idea, it wasn't even one of their interns. It was a collective decision, and while it likely is the most extreme, it's also the most immediate and guaranteed fix. This is going to hurt Square, this is going to upset quite a lot of people. But this is also going to ensure that the game isn't screwed over in the long term. And if it removes incentives from people taking your account details, then that's a good thing. Maybe in the future they may reconsider it, create a workaround, talk to people and so on. But for now, this is the avenue that they've chosen, and while it's a sucky sacrifice, it's a sacrifice that seems to be paying off as much (if not more) than it's hurting.

And it may well be paying off, but unless the playerbase does speak and reasonably says "well this sucks, and we hope you can improve it" then SE will have little impetus for improving it. Gifting of mounts, minions, and emotes is lost to us forever.

I think it's quite reasonable they take their immediate action, for whatever real reason and harsh as it may be, but I do want them to sit down now and put some effort into this still so that things can be improved for us genuine players. Be that an increase in the time a friend needs to be in place, future delivery of an item, requiring OTP, checking IP address history, linking in the lodestone APIs on mount/minion possessions, or whatever it may be. Not that they are addressing a supposed problem, they should be able to work this out.

[Midareyukki]

And it may well be paying off, but unless the playerbase does speak and reasonably says "well this sucks, and we hope you can improve it" then SE will have little impetus for improving it. Gifting of mounts, minions, and emotes is lost to us forever.

I think it's quite reasonable they take their immediate action, for whatever real reason and harsh as it may be, but I do want them to sit down now and put some effort into this still so that things can be improved for us genuine players. Be that an increase in the time a friend needs to be in place, future delivery of an item, requiring OTP, checking IP address history, linking in the lodestone APIs on mount/minion possessions, or whatever it may be. Not that they are addressing a supposed problem, they should be able to work this out.

Yep. Not disputing that. In fact, according to that twitter post, assuming it's true, Square's hands were tied. They likely were forced to go for an extreme measure.

So if people want to change this and have them implement a different method, then we need to make it known. If you understand how finances and how the visa thing works, if you can provide a better way than just "reopen the thing and risk these charlatans coming in and ruining things again", then say something.

Like, yeah, people are upset. Because it is an extreme measure. But it wasn't so hare-brained, they likely are aware of the repercussions. So being angy at the devs over this is a bit... eh? What's important is to now tell the devs to work on a way around this in the future or use a different method. Assuming they want to listen ^^; could also be that they think this is fine and leave it as-is.