At this point will FFXIV collapse if all mods and third party tools disappear?

[Mcg55ss]

Leaving aside any technical discussion about whether they can put the lid on the box even if they want to:

The hit would be massive, but survivable. Anyone saying it would be insignificant literally just hasn't been paying attention; anyone saying it would be fatal is drawing wrong conclusions from bad data.

Some fairly conservative estimates of how many people are using tools and what percentage would quit quickly sum up to wiping out two entire NA servers worth of endgame population - a number pushing up against 8 digits of annual revenue. This is the kind of number that draws immediate and overwhelming attention from the C-suite, and absolutely the kind of number that ends careers. However, it's also not that big of a number weighed against the totality of the playerbase and revenue generated. Even more generous estimates don't come close to the existentially-dangerous level for the entire game, though they would most certainly come with an increasing amount of heads rolling.

One of the most fundamental problems here is that if you tacitly allow a greater deal of personal expression in how people see their characters, you have a very large problem on your hands if you want to take that back. People get attached to their characters and their perception of those characters, and they are nearly never willing to 'hand it back'. This is one thing that I think the more conservative estimates miss - sure, for gameplay tool users, you probably won't see that high of an attrition rate. But visual modders? You'd lose so, so many of them, and you'll never get them back.

If it needed to be solved, the time to solve it was 4 years ago. It's far, far too late now.

Or it's the perfect time to do it because consoles can't mod, and with 14 finally coming to Xbox the only hit would be the PC players so they could do it figuring the new influx of Xbox would off set what they lose on PC. While people may leave the big question is where would they go? Most people who leave because of that would end up coming back at the moment because there's no real competition for FFXIV. WoW competes among the raiders crowd their raids and mythic + is good but lack of housing kills it when comparing rp/glamour community. So really until Ashes of creation, or riots new MMO comes out I don't think ff14 has much to stress if they want to ban them or not. Though even if they were I doubt they would do it before 7.1, if they ban it before or right on 7.0 they risk the sales for the next expansion. Because in the end they are a company and want to maximize profits. now if they did move to ban mods, I would think they would be as a company trying to find a way to only scan once you enter a dungeon, raid or PVP. I don't work on anticheat I don't know if it's possible but they're going to put an one in I figure it would be something like that

[Absurdity]

While people may leave the big question is where would they go? Most people who leave because of that would end up coming back at the moment because there's no real competition for FFXIV.

No real competition is debatable, there is absolutely competition or even a superior option out there depending on what your focus is.

For raiders it's rather simple, they'll just go back to WoW, they're probably raiding in both games already anyway.

For the people sitting in Limsa all day on the other hand there are always other options because what you seem to miss is that these people aren't playing XIV for it's amazing (lmao) gameplay or strong (lmao²) mmo elements.
They would just go to a different game that is essentially an online chat room with decent graphics and visual customization, because that's essentially all they're engaging with anyway.

If it needed to be solved, the time to solve it was 4 years ago. It's far, far too late now.

Especially since that side of the game has really only exploded in Shadowbringers.