Mod users in FFXIV are getting out of control

[KisaiTenshi]

Players are using them in droves and irresponsibly.

People are carelessly using them. Take note of the screenshot threads where models clearly have textures that don't exist in the game.

The Naked/Lewd mods are something I knew always existed (that's literately the first thing that modders do, with every game.)

I would advice to avoid Limsa Lominsa if possible. If you still need to go there, make sure not to drop your sword and/or not to bend over to pick it up.

Or change your character to Lalafell. I highly doubt there are any mods involving Lalafells... right? Right?

They definitely exist.

Modding in any form does violate the ToS. So do parsers and hunt trackers, and those tend to be ignored too. They're not doing things like WoW and GW2 do where they'll scan your computer looking for known programs like that.

Because people with 4 8TB drives would take literately hours to scan for unauthorized tools.

There are ways of detecting mods, hacks, unauthorized tools, but they all come back to "you can not trust the game client". The easiest, cheapest strategy is to checksum the files with the launcher, and report the server is not available if the checksums don't match. The harder/smarter solution requires the game client sending game geometry/textures back to the server when you change your gear, and having an out-of-bound process on the server to test those checksums against known files. That can be done to specifically look for mods that damage the game's reputation.

For tools that inject into the game binary or sniff the network traffic, those are harder to directly detect, and instead are defeated by not sending data to the game client that it doesn't need, and having the server flag suspicious data (Eg hunt trackers) that are faster than the user could possibly type it out.

But ultimately fighting a war on mods just makes people quit the game, especially when Square-Enix has not actively cracked down on anything.

Those people who are careless and posting about mods they use to the official forums, especially screenshots with the mods active, should not be surprised if one day they can't login to the game.

[Fay007]

People are carelessly using them. Take note of the screenshot threads where models clearly have textures that don't exist in the game.

The Naked/Lewd mods are something I knew always existed (that's literately the first thing that modders do, with every game.)

They definitely exist.



Because people with 4 8TB drives would take literately hours to scan for unauthorized tools.

There are ways of detecting mods, hacks, unauthorized tools, but they all come back to "you can not trust the game client". The easiest, cheapest strategy is to checksum the files with the launcher, and report the server is not available if the checksums don't match. The harder/smarter solution requires the game client sending game geometry/textures back to the server when you change your gear, and having an out-of-bound process on the server to test those checksums against known files. That can be done to specifically look for mods that damage the game's reputation.

For tools that inject into the game binary or sniff the network traffic, those are harder to directly detect, and instead are defeated by not sending data to the game client that it doesn't need, and having the server flag suspicious data (Eg hunt trackers) that are faster than the user could possibly type it out.

But ultimately fighting a war on mods just makes people quit the game, especially when Square-Enix has not actively cracked down on anything.

Those people who are careless and posting about mods they use to the official forums, especially screenshots with the mods active, should not be surprised if one day they can't login to the game.

Not to mention such gamefilescan going over the actual FF XIV Folder would be violating in quite some countries and laws

[KisaiTenshi]

Not to mention such gamefilescan going over the actual FF XIV Folder would be violating in quite some countries and laws

From a legal point of view, the game launcher has to do this to ensure the game is up to date, so no. What would be a privacy violation would be damaging the machine, or sending data from the user's machine without their consent, and you've already consented to to this by agreeing to the ToS. Just because you break the ToS doesn't mean it doesn't still apply. Let me point to an example of a serious screwup, look up PSO2's horrible screwup that bricked machines. One has to ask what the patcher did to brick a machine.

Websites can't arbitrarily send files from your PC to other sites, but when you agree to use FB, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, etc, you also agree to not hold them liable for any information they harvest from your activities due to their tracking beacons. This site (forum.square-enix.com) has the google analytics beacon on it, so if you use any google services, you're being tracked.

Anyone going "it's only pixels", or somehow can't see the problem. The problem is harassment. The game also provides a solution for this called "report harassment". That might ultimately do nothing to the player, but if that player decides to do some kind of revenge-porn by posting it somewhere outside the game to harass the player, then the problem goes outside the realm of what SE has control over and into DMCA's. At that point SE is still legally the copyright owner of the assets, of which I think SE has better things to do than try to shut down mod sites.

SE likely won't do anything until players start giving themselves cash shop items via mods. So please don't poke the bear. If people are modding, don't admit to it, don't discuss where to find mods, and don't post screenshots in public spaces of modded game clients.