Quote Originally Posted by ChaseNetwork View Post
I have an idea, though I can't gauge how helpful it would be.

Issue a rating of Square Enix to the Better Buisness Bureau, documenting their performance in upholding the standards of their own Terms of Service, End User Lisence Agreement, whatever.

Square Enix has no obligation to adhere to, or seek approval of the BBB, but the BBB is scrutinized by journalists, and a spike in negative opinions on a topic for a business would get eaten up by some of those journalists. The overall goal here being to instigate negative publicity. This ended working in the case of Destiny 2 by Bungie, though I can't promise Square Enix would care.
The BBB isn't a legal entity, it's basically "Serious Yelp, without the trolls". The BBB has no power to do anything, at all, other than mount PR embarrassment campaigns to warn people away from dealing with certain companies. But the BBB is also something of a scam. Without going into it, the BBB has no leverage over large companies, only small ones. Customers that trust the BBB rating may decide to not deal with companies that have numerous complaints, but if the company is the sole supplier of that product or service, then really the BBB rating is meaningless. Essentially, ignoring the BBB has no dire consequences unless a serious deluge of complaints pour in on the same same topic (eg not honoring refunds, defective product, etc.) The BBB can't tell a company how to operate their business, just act as a customer advocate.

Square-Enix is a Japanese company, so it's even less likely any kind of BBB complaint would even reach someone that could make a difference.

The most direct solution to solving the bot problem requires SE to empower a few players per server to actually have access to one GM tool that can "jail" a bot. Then let the GM's deal with the actual bots in the jail. Abuse = Lose the tool. However one needs to point out that this has never really worked in practice, even in games like Archeage where the entire mechanic was part of the game. The reason is that it's just another thing to be gamed, and since the game client lacks protection, there would be nothing stopping a player without actual access to the tool to be able to trigger it as well.

Which puts us back at an impasse on how to solve or mitigate the servers from being overrun with bots short of straight up closing all of them.