Modders did it to themselves

[Nyastra]

and if the people that hate these kind of mods purposely talk about it? What then?

It’s really not that deep. SE has always known about mods—it’s never been a secret. The issue came from people going on a public rampage showing them off everywhere, way too loudly and too often. If it had stayed subtle and within the circle, a few haters speaking out wouldn’t have been enough to make it blow up. We’ve seen the same thing happen before. And at the end of the day, SE has a public image and legal responsibility to uphold. If something gets too loud and too visible, they don’t have the luxury of pretending not to notice.

[MsMisato]

It’s really not that deep. SE has always known about mods—it’s never been a secret. The issue came from people going on a public rampage showing them off everywhere, way too loudly and too often. If it had stayed subtle and within the circle, a few haters speaking out wouldn’t have been enough to make it blow up. We’ve seen the same thing happen before. And at the end of the day, SE has a public image and legal responsibility to uphold. If something gets too loud and too visible, they don’t have the luxury of pretending not to notice.

true, but there are people here that go looking for these mods acting like they're popo. its just sad, because they're typical karens honestly. as for the luxury of pretending of not to notice for SE. they had many opportunities to squash it, even during the world first DSR and the previous world first clear debacle of the teams using third party tools to get clears publicly, they chose to ignore it at that point and turned blind eye to said tools. If players have to use to tool play the combat aspect of the game to give an edge or make it easier then there is an issue SE is failing to address and that's on them.

Using Mare to make an example because people want to go "owo daddy spank me im your puppy grr grr" then by all means have at it,not one advantage is given in game play. Just because its not your thing doesn't mean it not someone else. Some people use it for upscales of vanilla armors, others want more variety in colors and so on which I agree with the variety in colors bit because honestly, we should have more than 2 channels for colors on armor and even games that are less resource intensive has better customization options on a mobile device. People have been asking for the basic of things in this game for the past 10 years that should been here to begin with.

You all are more worried about what someone is seeing on their end of the screen in their room/house then people tyring to gain an advantage with tools...

[Nyastra]

true, but there are people here that go looking for these mods acting like they're popo. its just sad, because they're typical karens honestly. as for the luxury of pretending of not to notice for SE. they had many opportunities to squash it, even during the world first DSR and the previous world first clear debacle of the teams using third party tools to get clears publicly, they chose to ignore it at that point and turned blind eye to said tools. If players have to use to tool play the combat aspect of the game to give an edge or make it easier then there is an issue SE is failing to address and that's on them.

Using Mare to make an example because people want to go "owo daddy spank me im your puppy grr grr" then by all means have at it,not one advantage is given in game play. Just because its not your thing doesn't mean it not someone else. Some people use it for upscales of vanilla armors, others want more variety in colors and so on which I agree with the variety in colors bit because honestly, we should have more than 2 channels for colors on armor and even games that are less resource intensive has better customization options on a mobile device. People have been asking for the basic of things in this game for the past 10 years that should been here to begin with.

You all are more worried about what someone is seeing on their end of the screen in their room/house then people tyring to gain an advantage with tools...

I completely get your point, and I agree — SE should absolutely address cheating and advantage-granting tools. The main distinction is just that visual/aesthetic mods, even NSFW ones, don’t actually impact gameplay. The concern there is how it reflects on SE’s public image. Cheating in games happens — even on a large scale — and while it’s a problem that SE should address, it doesn’t really reflect on Square Enix itself. The issue lies with the individuals choosing to cheat. Visual mods, especially NSFW ones, are different because their visibility does affect SE’s public image, which is why the reaction is often stronger there.

I, for one, don’t care if someone wants tig bitties or whatever, but there’s still a certain level of personal responsibility when using these mods in public spaces or on platforms where others can see them.

[Clerith]

S.E. is losing players no matter what direction they take with mods and plugins.
If they crack down more strictly on third-party mods, plugins, and launchers, many players will look for other games where modding isn't a major problem.
And it's not just about visual aspects — some launchers also help with connectivity.
On the other hand, inaction also significantly damages the reputation/sales, while also making the game very unsafe for minors.


To elaborate on it;
A YouTuber recently showed what the game looked like with Mare and Synchshells.
And it's just as Mare's creator admitted: "A lot of it is absolutely disgusting and problematic — to the point where he openly said he's lost some faith in humanity"—
and that can absolutely ruin the fun and perspective on the game for many.

It also showed, that neither the players' appearances nor their emotes can be trusted to be what you see, and that's just a very bad feeling/realization to have.
You're constantly questioning what you're seeing and don't want to sit next to characters you don't know.
And that, in turn, destroys the immersion enormously.

And not only that, but players can also "abuse" other players' characters and their minions and post screenshots of their actions on Discord.
Or you might be invited to an in-game wedding and later find out that everyone except you was naked.
And let's not pretend that only Rohblox has a problem with groomers/stalkers.
18+ clubs are openly advertised. There is no age verification for these things, and the game is rated 12+ in my country.
This means that the game simply cannot be safely recommended to minors – which also leads to fewer players (of the good kind) and sales.

That aside, Mods also affect the store in more than just one way.
Many people will tell you, that they only purchased something because they saw a modified version of it.
However, the ability to change appearance and races at any time through mods also leads to a loss of sales.

Both approaches, in turn, lead to a loss of players and money.
But only one approach is morally correct (to me at least).
And if nothing changes, then the game should definitely be given an "18+" age rating in every country.

[Aidorouge]

A YouTuber recently showed what the game looked like with Mare and Synchshells.
And it's just as Mare's creator admitted: "A lot of it is absolutely disgusting and problematic — to the point where he openly said he's lost some faith in humanity"—
and that can absolutely ruin the fun and perspective on the game for many.

It also showed, that neither the players' appearances nor their emotes can be trusted to be what you see, and that's just a very bad feeling/realization to have.
You're constantly questioning what you're seeing and don't want to sit next to characters you don't know.
And that, in turn, destroys the immersion enormously.

And not only that, but players can also "abuse" other players' characters and their minions and post screenshots of their actions on Discord.
Or you might be invited to an in-game wedding and later find out that everyone except you was naked.
And let's not pretend that only Rohblox has a problem with groomers/stalkers.
18+ clubs are openly advertised. There is no age verification for these things, and the game is rated 12+ in my country.
This means that the game simply cannot be safely recommended to minors – which also leads to fewer players (of the good kind) and sales.

That aside, Mods also affect the store in more than just one way.
Many people will tell you, that they only purchased something because they saw a modified version of it.
However, the ability to change appearance and races at any time through mods also leads to a loss of sales.

Both approaches, in turn, lead to a loss of players and money.
But only one approach is morally correct (to me at least).
And if nothing changes, then the game should definitely be given an "18+" age rating in every country.

I don't really care how other people are doing up their characters with mods any more than I care how they dress up using in-game items. Which I might add, there's a number of official items that could be deemed "problematic" due to how skimpy they are, and then there's always been that discourse where some people think items SHOULD be gendered locked because they don't want to see males in female clothing, or even think females should ALWAYS be in skirts/dresses. I'm also pretty sure "immersion" was destroyed when they let us fight in bikinis/speedos and mascot outfits, to say nothing of the current complaints over fantasy versus sci-fi versus modern glamour design.

It's not like "abuse" with emotes and the like isn't possible without using mods either. I've had on at least three occasions where some random male character (all Au Ra for some reason) ran up behind my character and did some kind of shout/screaming emote that made it look like they were humping up into my female character, which I'm not even sure is report-worthy (so I didn't try) because its someone using in-game things Square-Enix provided them and not a third-party tool (and it's not like they said anything crass in the chat either in case anyone thinks they could have been smacked for that). If they were using a mod to make their emote even more crude while posting screenshots of it somewhere else, I would literally have no way of knowing, so worrying about it would be exhausting and futile.

And the game is already "not safe for children" when the first dungeon you can do in the entire game at level 15 literally has a prison cell where pirates keep their kidnapped and raped victims. So if we're playing that card, Square-Enix needs to go back and scrub a lot of glamours and dialogue from their own game before they start wagging fingers at "inappropriate" content coming in from third parties and that arguably, children shouldn't be playing this game in the first place when the game its self will shout such kid-friendly things like "kill the men, take the women" at them.

[Brightamethyst]

It’s really not that deep. SE has always known about mods—it’s never been a secret.

Right? In situations like this I always think about an interview I saw with one of the WoW devs. Talking about feedback and community trends and such, he said something along the lines of, "If 'everyone' knows about something, you can be sure that also includes the dev team."