Integrity matters

[Turtledeluxe]

I get what you're saying here. You're saying developer policies and permissive systems can shape the environment and potentially make certain behaviors more likely.

Where I disagree is that “theoretically more likely” isn't enough to establish that the game is actually contributing to those behaviors. We'd need evidence.

That's why I keep coming back to: what specific behavior are we talking about, what evidence shows the game enables it, and what could SQEX actually do about it?

That depends on whether you're talking about specific behaviors or not. In the context of dev attitude, it's not about specific actions, it's about the dev's responsibility in shaping the environment. How do they change that? A dev approved toolkit. Ban plugins entirely. I'm not sure why you're acting like there's nothing they can do regarding mods. As far as the very first statement YoshiP made about this issue, we'd have to time travel. That's why I keep saying it's too late and this is an ongoing cycle. New weird plugins pop up every other month now. Did he intend for surveillance plugins to pop up for example? Would that be in a curated tool kit?

As far as I'm aware, I haven't excused or denied the alleged criminal activity. I also don't recall seeing anyone else here make the claim that people were excusing or denying the criminal activity. If that's referring to something specific, please share with the rest of the class.

What I've questioned is the leap from alleged crimes by specific people to broader claims about FFXIV's entire community or modding culture.

I'm willing to discuss whether the game's systems or policies contribute to these problems, but I think we should distinguish what's documented from what's being inferred. And if we're concerned about sweeping or inflammatory accusations, that standard has to apply to everyone—including yourself.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6844995

I try to stay out of these nonsensical discussions but I would just like to point out that criminals indulging in crime everywhere does not mean some places are not more alluring to criminals than others. I mean do I even need to provide evidence of this?

FFXIV is a game with employees who are furries. It's a game featuring human avatars with human emojis and voices. It has sexualized content directly in its story. It has sexualized glam. And yes, it has player made sexual content directly in and out of the game.

Stop using whataboutism or black/white reasoning. You aren't fooling anyone. Just because it doesn't consume the entire game or you have never encountered people like that doesn't mean it isn't prevalent in XIV. Its impossible to prove what the actual ratio is but its not 0, and it doesn't matter if it's higher in WoW or not ultimately.

This all comes across as needless defense of the publisher. They could do more to assuage theoretical issues with this but I would argue they don't, rather they actually make it worse. It's a strawman to make the bar "everyone who plays lalafell". I don't think anyone actually believes that and even if they did, that's a statistical impossibility no one should entertain. It's not even worth typing out. What we should be doing is admitting there is in fact this culture in XIV, and even if 99% of the time it's completely legal, it's a question of how far is too far in a social game that minors can and likely do play.

In fact, given the trend of its development, this year they were forced to raise their cero rating in Japan due to gpose. Instead of limiting the function, they opted to make it recommended for people 17 and up. But this doesn't actually prevent anyone from buying the game or playing it. It still functions as an admission, does it not?

Where's all this stuff you keep harping about "widespread", "causation"? I think the post directly contradicts that. If anything I think I agree it's an extremely rare thing that happens. I only know of two cases specifically for which I've seen evidence and even admissions. In any case, this was being discussed for a while before I said anything and I was mainly bothered by the actual logic of the defense. Additionally, I later explained regarding GPose that I am not sure how to make it a lower rating. But I argued they should do whatever possible to make it a lower rating to make it equivalent with the actual game ESRB rating. I just think that makes sense. It seems contradictory to have 17+ content in the game and just say "oh it's on the parents", which is what SE said, in the update. You keep asking for evidence, there it is.

https://novacrystallis.com/2026/03/f...on-group-pose/

[VanillaWafer]

snip'd.

I understand the distinction you're making about developer responsibility for shaping the environment. And yeah, I agree that Square Enix could change its policies around plugins and player-created tools.

Where I still differ is that changing the environment and establishing that it caused particular behaviors are two different questions. Don't think we can assume the latter without evidence.

And I think that's where we've been talking past each other. I'm not saying there's nothing Square Enix could do. I'm saying we should be specific about what problem we're trying to solve and what evidence shows a particular change would address it.

[Turtledeluxe]

I understand the distinction you're making about developer responsibility for shaping the environment. And yeah, I agree that Square Enix could change its policies around plugins and player-created tools.

Where I still differ is that changing the environment and establishing that it caused particular behaviors are two different questions. Don't think we can assume the latter without evidence.

And I think that's where we've been talking past each other. I'm not saying there's nothing Square Enix could do. I'm saying we should be specific about what problem we're trying to solve and what evidence shows a particular change would address it.

What are people not being specific about? I think it's an impossible task to prove the % of criminal cases in FFXIV vs other games without first or third party data to show this. Who has argued that most players are criminals or that criminality is otherwise widespread? When I look at the OP, I don't see this. I just see people deflecting from OP by bringing this up. I guess you could say they made the comment PvP is "infested". That's not a particularly damning or compelling argument to say that means "criminality is widespread". It's a specific claim about PVP and it's not even that bad, seems more like casual hyperbole than an actual argument.

If your issue is the accusations without a court case or otherwise equivalent evidence, I feel like that's subject to the same logical argument. Absence of officiated documentation/evidence doesn't mean a crime hasn't occurred. In some cases these behaviors are linked directly to official accounts with multiple witnesses, screenshots, etc. I think potentially blaming the victims for not filing fast enough is strange given the nature of these particular accusations (possession/production of materials, grooming). There can be all sorts of reasons someone hasn't filed or never files at all, hasn't reported or never reports, that's the sad reality.

[VanillaWafer]

What are people not being specific about? I think it's an impossible task to prove the % of criminal cases in FFXIV vs other games without first or third party data to show this. Who has argued that most players are criminals or that criminality is otherwise widespread? When I look at the OP, I don't see this. I just see people deflecting from OP by bringing this up. I guess you could say they made the comment PvP is "infested". That's not a particularly damning or compelling argument to say that means "criminality is widespread". It's a specific claim about PVP and it's not even that bad, seems more like casual hyperbole than an actual argument.

By “specific,” I mean being specific about the behavior we're talking about and what we're claiming FFXIV or Square Enix is doing that contributes to it.

I'm not asking anyone to prove a percentage of criminal cases. I'm asking where we're moving from “this exists” to “the game's environment or policies are contributing to it,” because those are separate claims and require different evidence.

I don't think the OP is arguing that most players are criminals, and I wasn't saying they were. My point is that once we move from specific cases to claims about the game's culture, prevalence, or developer responsibility, we need to be clear about what is actually established versus what we're inferring.

I'm not trying to deflect from the OP. I'm responding to the broader claims being made in the discussion and asking that we keep those distinctions clear. As Carighan said, the solution has to match the problem, but we keep talking about two different things.

In regards to your question:

I wonder when people will address the large CSAM rings that have formed in FFXIV as a result of the modding community. People flock to FFXIV because they can mod child characters and then use those connections to share real-world CSAM because they found “their people”. Hundreds of people were shown to be in just one of the CSAM rings uncovered lately that were run by and made for kiddie modders. FFXIV has become a haven for pedophiles. Why does Square Enix want this reputation? FFXIV players have already shown up on Chris Hansen’s latest show.

There was another post made by this user, but it must have been taken down. I would bring it back up, but I'd rather avoid getting my response taken down as well. So I'll instead summarize it as:

FFXIV's alleged scandals and community culture have damaged its reputation, while WoW is thriving, and they believe this reflects poorly on the FFXIV community.

[VanillaWafer]

If your issue is the accusations without a court case or otherwise equivalent evidence, I feel like that's subject to the same logical argument. Absence of officiated documentation/evidence doesn't mean a crime hasn't occurred. In some cases these behaviors are linked directly to official accounts with multiple witnesses, screenshots, etc. I think potentially blaming the victims for not filing fast enough is strange given the nature of these particular accusations (possession/production of materials, grooming). There can be all sorts of reasons someone hasn't filed or never files at all, hasn't reported or never reports, that's the sad reality.

I don't think there has to be a court case for something to be credible, and I'm not blaming victims for not reporting.

My point is that the evidence should match the claim. Corroborating witnesses, admissions, records, existing reports, or other independently verifiable evidence can help establish specific wrongdoing. But claims about prevalence, causation, or whether FFXIV's environment contributes to it require evidence supporting those broader conclusions.

I'm not dismissing the possibility that crimes occurred. I'm asking that we distinguish between what the evidence establishes and what we're inferring from it.

[Aidorouge]

As far as a standard, i'd like to address that in combination with this claim that endorsement is a factor and there's evidence lacking in this regard. I think these are impossible things to prove and not really necessary. Isn't what we're actually talking about the trajectory of this game?

According to one user, the player base gave this notoriously slow reactive team, who took three years to make an actual job recently, only one expansion worth of time to implement net code fixes. The director of the game comes out and says, "hey, I don't mind if you do this as long as no one's reporting it, and we don't see it." Players then take it upon themselves to start creating mods. So doesn't this trajectory show that relatively early in the game, the precedent was already set that plugins are okay? Doesn't it show that the dev team likely became incentivized to just allow it? Because players basically showed that, hey, we're willing to fix problems for you very quickly. Doesn't it also show that people might feel some permission to do other things outside the terms of service? Is that really so much of a stretch to suggest? Mods are already implicated in very questionable things. The most popular streamer in the game was caught on live using nude mods.

So I think we're past the point of needing a causation. It just feels like a distraction. Let me go back to my first post and repeat that it's too late. We're talking about a decade of this trajectory. They could implement some fixes like a dev-approved toolkit or visibility options for people, etc but I don't see that happening. I don't think they really care. It all goes back to the very beginning, where the policy is, "hey, I don't really care about all that unless it goes public". It's all a vicious cycle.

I don't think anyone ever doubted that mod usage was a thing and it gets used for cheating and lewdness alike, people only questioned the actual full scale of it. The OP and others would have you believe it's "nearly everyone" including you and me, and any denial will be constituted as admission of guilt, no exceptions.

That they or others then try to tie "breaking of the ToS" to "breaking of real life law" is why they've gotten pushback because it sounds less like someone with valid concerns and more like someone who had made up their mind about everyone else that isn't them, while trying to imply anyone who might counter them for any reason is "one of them".

It's not the first time either. We've had more than one topic in the past where someone else has claimed all RPers (not just erotic ones) are all modders and all groomers, or that anyone using cosmetic mods MUST be also cheating because one website bundles cosmetics with cheats, forgetting for a moment that there's also websites that only specialize in one or the other, or that raiders and RPers have feuded in the past over whose mods are worse or do more damage to the game and community.

Likewise its not the first time someone has tried to claim that all ERPers are predators, it's just the first time someone has a "SEE, SEE!? I TOLD YOU SO!" because they have a single case of one group being caught with actual child porn, and naturally they used that as a vehicle to go on the offensive against well... everyone playing FF14 apparently.

The irony is that ERP is not specifically against the ToS from what other people have said, and GMs have allegedly backed this up. It only becomes an issue when people are being "publicly indecent and disruptive" because that can be seen by others without their consent and reported, which is then oddly consistent with how FF14 treats mod usage as a whole with their "don't ask don't tell" approach. Someone running silently through the game with some cosmetic or animation mod isn't going to be a blip on any radar, someone broadcasting on a megaphone while blue text describes the appearance and motion is going to get nuked.

Which does leads to one thing a lot of people here will agree with, that a lot of the modding community can not keep their goddamn mouth shut. That's how we got a billboard, that's how Mare got sniped when others didn't, and it's how that "social app" got smacked down. Thrice. And on the flip side you have the streamers getting banned for using literal cheats, some of them being so low IQ they did it during highly spectated world races. You won't find anyone here that will object to loud and proud modders getting destroyed regardless of the mods they use. I think what has happened though, is that some people see the sheer noise and stupidity of modders and assume that is indicative of the total playerbase. It is a very loud and dumb piece of the pie, yes, but only a slice and not the whole thing. Same as anyone trying to act like all casuals are whiny or all hardcores are toxic.

If it were up to me, those little "RMT casualty lists" would include numbers for people getting banned for other infractions, including mod usage, just to remind that crowd "thou art mortal". It also comes with the self-inflicted embarrassment of Square-Enix having to acknowledge that despite constantly telling people to behave with mods, that some people stubbornly refuse and even push against the line, and now they had to go in and publicly state how they had to go grab a mop. If it happens enough, gets reported by other websites enough, it might just make Square-Enix finally put a more firm foot down because they have to address the situation they helped create beyond useless finger-wagging.

Alternately, if things like Gpose and other parts of the game's content (including player made) are considered "too much" for being rated T for Teen anymore, then perhaps push the game's rating up to M for Mature. For most of us that won't change anything since we're adults anyway, but it would cause some of that under 17 crowd to be "protectively filtered out" when their parents or guardians decide the game isn't appropriate for them anymore.

If the concern is that the game no longer matches the rating because of all these "developments" than the rating should be adjusted, not for the game to censor or sanitize itself, especially when some people already feel like Dawntrail was dragged down by trying to be "too safe and sensitive". Hell, its part of why the stuff with Vamp probably sticks out so much, because almost nobody was expecting something like that after "rubber bullets" and similar.

[Turtledeluxe]

Ok had to fix this.

It looks like if you do a simple search, two investigations come up. The first is from 10 days ago and involves about 6 FFXIV players who met in game and formed a group recruiting others to talk about and send you know what. Obviously its within the modding community. The second involves one FFXIV player who engaged in grooming and an FFXIV streamer who (sort of?) aided them. Most streamers and their FCs use mods but not sure about this case.

The more recent one is from a plugin creator and it seems it happened in her own community, so props to her. Her particular case is exhaustive, even coordinating IP addresses to track down the ringleader. She also says in comments she found him in game and seen evidence he has been asking players in game if they have dogs for the purpose of making, let's just say, incredibly not legal content with them.

It was really easy to find this information. I assume all the people playing defense for the game ITT put on their big boy/girl pants and actually looked for this? It wasn't hard for me to find at all, especially since one went viral and has almost 1 million views. Could people ITT perhaps be acting in bad faith? I will assume you just put no effort into what you're debating here. As far as the case involving the six people, the creator is reporting them in game and has already reported all six individuals to the proper line. If you watch her video, you can really tell that she cares about this and performed some pretty exhaustive investigating to compile all of this together. It really shows you why we don't get reports like this all the time because it can actually require a specific awareness and resources to pull this off, as well as courage and coordination to put it out into the public and bring it to authorities.

I'm not going to link it just because I don't know what's proper on the forums, and I don't want to conflate this with SE. I don't think this proves exactly how many people in the game are like this. But it does show, especially given this thread, this is something that has happened in the game in the past and is still happening to this day. What can SE do about it? I'm not really sure, but this came out 10 days ago, and there's been no public statement about it. Isn't that why leaders in the real world do this kind of thing when bad things happen? I think that's why you see this frustration in the thread. That's why the thread has likes. Everyone knows they won't make a statement about the case with the six people. And yes I realize a lot of the actual chat happened on a separate platform, it still formed in game, in the modding scene. How many times does it need to happen exactly to say more than "don't talk about fight club"??

And I just want to say, there's several people in the comments of the latest case saying the same thing as people in this thread "well did u tell the cops?". Literally nothing else to add to the conversation except snark. That's actually in the video if you bother to watch it. I think if your first impulse is that, you don't actually really care about the situation, so why engage with it at all? Similarly, I don't know why people have harped on this because, like I said, it was very easy to find this information.

That's going to be my final comment on this because I feel like everyone is an adult here and they can look into this themselves. Although it can be tough to get through because the one about the streamer is quite long, I do find all the evidence presented in both of these cases to be quite credible, even containing damning and verified admissions. I don't care to keep arguing if this is a culture inside of the game, personally. I don't think SE endorses it either but they certainly aren't showing awareness or concern about it.

[Turtledeluxe]

Alternately, if things like Gpose and other parts of the game's content (including player made) are considered "too much" for being rated T for Teen anymore, then perhaps push the game's rating up to M for Mature. For most of us that won't change anything since we're adults anyway, but it would cause some of that under 17 crowd to be "protectively filtered out" when their parents or guardians decide the game isn't appropriate for them anymore.

In my view, this should already have been done if at all possible.

[Gwenkatsu]

It was really easy to find this information. I assume all the people playing defense for the game ITT put on their big boy/girl pants and actually looked for this? It wasn't hard for me to find at all, especially since one went viral and has almost 1 million views.

Here are recent real‑world cases where grooming or recruitment happened in everyday public spaces:

• Restaurants & theatre meetups → Former ACT Attorney-General grooming a teen.
• Train station social hotspot → Nürnberg grooming network targeting minors.
• Barbershop → Genf exploitation ring using a business as a grooming hub.
• Gym / sports facility → U.S. gymnastics coach grooming athletes over years.

Surprise, surprise - the bad apples are everywhere. So after you closed down online gaming to save the kids, what's next on your list? Restaurants, train stations, barbershops, or gyms?

[Carighan]

Absence of officiated documentation/evidence doesn't mean a crime hasn't occurred.

Yes, but keep in mind that the same applies in reverse. Just like absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, the same absence of evidence isn't evidence of presence, either. You just do not know. And since in general people are innocent until proven guilty, all of the following are to be assumed:

* Square Enix is not at fault for criminals using FFXIV for illegal activity. You cannot show they were complicit or causative in this illegal behavior.
* You cannot even show they were negligient in their approach to preventing such activity.
* Other players not at fault for criminals using FFXIV for illegal activity. You cannot show they were complicit or causative in this illegal behavior.
* In fact, you cannot even show they were or are aware of this, as a group. If you can, I'd love for you try. Just try.
* Players using mods are not at fault for criminals using FFXIV for illegal activity. You cannot show they were complicit or causative in this illegal behavior.
* In fact, again, you cannot even show they were aware of this.

You cannot surmise that because something doesn't show absence, then obviously the unknown part must be true. That's not how logical inference works. The truthiness of "players are doing illegal stuff with mods" is ⊥. That's the sign for logical bottom in four-value logic, you lack information supporting either "true" or "false", You Know Nothing, basically.

You also keep bringing up that this is, somehow, a widespread or common or frequent problem. Please, so we can have a useful discussion, what is "widespread" and "common" in these cases? What interaction types do they cover, and to what percentage. Is "widespread" as a word to mean 51%+ of players? 30%+ of playtime? Is "common" 51%+ of players? Most documents talking about serious crimes or issues define these words first, so we don't have one person intuitively associate "common" with 99% while another thinks of 51%.

Further, you suggest that the game should be rated M for Mature. The game is, at present, rated T for Teen, for

is rated T for Teen by the ESRB with Language, Mild Blood, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, and Violence. This is a role-playing game in which players assume the role of an adventurer exploring a fantastical world. Players travel through various lands, interact with characters, and engage in battle against humans and fantasy creatures (e.g., demons, skeletons). Players use swords, spears, and magic spells to kill several opponents. Combat can be frenetic at times, accompanied by clashing sounds and brief yells. Cutscenes also depict instances of violence: an extended off-screen sequence in which a character is stabbed; a man shot off-screen while crawling away; a character losing an arm off-screen in a swordfight. Blood stains may appear on the ground in a couple of levels. The game includes some suggestive/sexual material: female characters dressed in revealing outfits; camera angles that pan suggestively on bodies; dialogue that states “[s]tay clear from them two. Gave me the crotch rot, they did!” Players occasionally encounter characters who consume alcohol (e.g., “Jussone more cup, littlemann! Hic!”). The word “sh*te” appears in dialogue.

This seems to include the sexually suggestive nature, and in accordance to the law, this makes it a T for Teen game. How come you disagree with this? The law says sexually suggestive themes and scenes result in a T, why do you think it ought to be an M?

(edit)
I checked my local ratings agency (USK) who gave FFXIV a 12+ rating, for essentially the exact same content: frequenty but mild-ish display of violence, alcohol and smoking being on display, rough language and sexually suggestive themes and scenes. What about this would suggest it's not suitable for teens?