Integrity matters

[Len_]

I suppose the concern of Square-Enix making some sort of "criminal investigations unit" is that it puts up this big official billboard that says "we have a problem here" and people have exactly two reactions to that.

1. Praise for being vigilant and taking action for everyone's safety.
2. Further insistence that the game was in fact some sort of haven for criminals.

While I know most people would prefer them doing something or nothing, doing "anything" in this context is still going to make them look bad in the eyes of some people, especially the parents ironically enough, because unfortunately a lot of them operate under the assumption that "everything was fine when they walked away" so to suddenly find out the MMO their child is playing is not only acknowledging predation occurred but that it got "bad enough" they had to intervene... they're not going to take the chance of those systems failing because in their eyes the game has failed already because it happened even one time ever.

The "MMO their child is playing" clearly states that online interactions are not rated by the ESRB and therefore the parent's responsibility to moderate for their child. Square Enix shouldn't have any kind of "child abuse task force" because it's not their responsibility. That's falls on the police. And if there was any kind of way they could aid in the investigation of a real case they would certainly do so without posting a notice on Lodestone about it. That's how things work in the real world. This entire tangent where someone felt the need to bring up child rape in the context of wanting to get rid of game mods is surreal to be honest.

[Thurmnmurmn]

When there's something strange, in your neighborhood, who you gonna call???
Chris Hansen!!

[Turtledeluxe]

The "MMO their child is playing" clearly states that online interactions are not rated by the ESRB and therefore the parent's responsibility to moderate for their child. Square Enix shouldn't have any kind of "child abuse task force" because it's not their responsibility. That's falls on the police. And if there was any kind of way they could aid in the investigation of a real case they would certainly do so without posting a notice on Lodestone about it. That's how things work in the real world. This entire tangent where someone felt the need to bring up child rape in the context of wanting to get rid of game mods is surreal to be honest.

Square Enix, unfortunately for you, already has one. They're called GMs. And private businesses must comply with federal laws even if its not mentioned directly in the ToS. So your claim here is not correct. Certain things are not their responsibility, but crime occurring within their game is. Your next claim is that SE would cooperate is misleading. SE is forced to cooperate with actual subpoenas whether they like it or not. The first post is not a tangent, it's deliberately crafted with sections so people like you can parse it even though it didn't help, since anyone can read the part about modbeasting and see its written to illustrate that common perception of the consequences doesn't usually cover the most drastic cases. Its not randomly brought up, its the final part in a list because its the worst of the worst.

As far as the lodestone, if they can use it for DDOS, RMT, and Account login info, they can use it for a broad sexual harassment/abuse statement. If the director has talked about plugins on stream once, he can do it again. The thread is about this very subject. Integrity.

Frankly, if you want to sneak back into the thread once the actual cases have been discussed, and we've established that they exist, you might as well say something actually accurate and not misleading. You might want to give the impression you've actually been in the real world.

[Tomokonoki]

Finding minors in this game? Impossible. No minor has the mental capacity nor the attention span necessary for playing an MMO. Now, I assume there can be an EXTREMELY RARE case of one of two teenagers actually playing, which should absolutely prompt Square Enix to change the rating of the game to M instead of T. Why even have that? Minors aren't gonna play this game... Why having such a rating when probably less than 0.00003% of the player base is under 18? We have characters walking around Limsa Lominsa in literal BDSM outfits without even using mods.

[Len_]

Finding minors in this game? Impossible. No minor has the mental capacity nor the attention span necessary for playing an MMO. Now, I assume there can be an EXTREMELY RARE case of one of two teenagers actually playing, which should absolutely prompt Square Enix to change the rating of the game to M instead of T. Why even have that? Minors aren't gonna play this game... Why having such a rating when probably less than 0.00003% of the player base is under 18? We have characters walking around Limsa Lominsa in literal BDSM outfits without even using mods.

I have met some over the years. They seem to know that they're likely to get blocked and ignored once they reveal their age. "I'm 15 guess you're gonna blacklist me now huh?" "YYYYEP bye"

I guess the fact that that has happened to them before is a rare green flag for the playerbase. Kinda makes me feel bad though because it probably is hard to find friends their own age in this game.

[Tomokonoki]

I have met some over the years. They seem to know that they're likely to get blocked and ignored once they reveal their age. "I'm 15 guess you're gonna blacklist me now huh?" "YYYYEP bye"

I guess the fact that that has happened to them before is a rare green flag for the playerbase. Kinda makes me feel bad though because it probably is hard to find friends their own age in this game.

They changed the rating in Japan to 17+. In Europe I believe it's PEGI 16.
Why is the American rating still 13+?
They should give it a mature rating. The Faerie server on Aether data center is basically used as tinder. I don't even need to mention what goes in Balmung.
The interests of players changed. We're not in the early 2000s anymore. MMOs aren't games for teens any longer. If what you said is true, that shows how the actual context of the game is.
Sometimes a genre ages with its players. I hope that, because of the Japanese rating, story and content becomes more serious.
This community is the biggest cesspool of degeneracy of the gaming world. And that's saying something, considering the kind of players that gacha games have. I would never play this game while someone else is looking lmao

[Nokuushi]

Well... it seems Modding community did a major stinker and their CP folders are out. Am I surprised? No. Just shocked it took this long.

Will SE do something about this now, or are we good with it?

[TeresaFortell]

Well... it seems Modding community did a major stinker and their CP folders are out. Am I surprised? No. Just shocked it took this long.

Will SE do something about this now, or are we good with it?

Do what exactly? The exposé showed that most events happened outside the game, on Discord and other social platforms. So if you want to actually prevent this from happening again, it's probably best to remove chat entirely from the game.

[Arthur-Holt]

Well... it seems Modding community did a major stinker and their CP folders are out. Am I surprised? No. Just shocked it took this long.

Will SE do something about this now, or are we good with it?

The people responsible were reported to the authorities and like teressa said the events happened outside of the game so what are you even asking for here?

[Turtledeluxe]

There's a lot of people in this thread acting very obtuse about this.On alts at that.
Of course, ultimately we don't know exactly what certain people were doing in the game besides chat. And there's only correlation, not causation. A lot of these takes seem anti awareness, when you don't know any more specifics than we do. I think it's way too early to say "nothing to see here".

We should take a "follow the money" approach here and observe that certain characters earlier in the thread were labeling it as dubious to trust the developers in choosing a third-party toolkit, but are now arguing that players should trust that the developers are mitigating these types of situations to the fullest extent (based on a full assessment on what these characters were doing in game). "Most" isn't all and reporting to authorities does not prove no further mitigation is possible.

All the creepers really are showing up in this thread now, like, "why are you even playing our game", as we react to these cases for the first time. I had no idea the specifics of all these new cases and I did cancel my sub yesterday. But if your best defense is "yeah, we have tons of creeps and the devs are never going to do anything about it", all you're achieving is proving the TC right.