reShade / GShade allowed?

[Nadjira]

Hi Folks,
recently we had a big discussion about reshade and if its allowed.

Little fact round (I am pro GShade because the game looks so much better with it):

• reShade injects itself into directX to alter and add shaders to the render pipeline
• reShade is not altering or analysing any game files, it operates after the game is passed to the video card - therefore as against the TOS as nVidia Graphic driver or Discord overlay.
• nVidia is using an alternate version of reshade in their driver to enhance the view
• Some RTS games ban for actively using reShade because it is an unfair advantage (i.e. Fortnite) - some shader can sharpen the picture so that you can react faster
• 2013 Robert "Hvinire" Peeler (Community rep) wrote: Utilizing such a tool would not violate any agreements customers have with Square Enix, and we don't plan on doing anything to restrict users from accessing it.
  Source: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post1408111

Mentioning this in the novice chat leaded to a cruxification.
The consent at the end was Hvinire has no say it just his opinion as long as Yoshida himself does not say "it is allowed" its worthless in their view and if fortnite bans for it, it should be banned in FF14...

So please is there any official statement apart from the quote from 2013?

Cheers thank you

[Packetdancer]

I mean... NVidia has their own fork of ReShade included in GeForce Experience (under the name "Freestyle"), and FFXIV is one of the officially-supported games. (Scroll down to spot it, the list of games is Very Long.) You can even import additional/custom ReShade shaders into Freestyle by dropping them in the appropriate directory.

So if you're running GeForce Experience and have the feature turned on, congrats, you're *already* running ReShade; you could hit the hotkey and bring up the Freestyle interface in-game *right now*.

Anyway, if ReShade variants were expressly forbidden, I suspect Square-Enix would not have allowed FFXIV to be one of the officially-supported games for Freestyle.

[MorionQ]

From my limited understanding, the low tolerance of mods stems from the console players having no access to them, thus asking players to play on the same standards.

Utilizing such a tool would not violate any agreements customers have with Square Enix, and we don't plan on doing anything to restrict users from accessing it.

However, we advise that players use this at their own risk. Square Enix does not regulate the content of the aforementioned add-on and will not be responsible for any damage or losses resulting from its use.

[Eriane_Elis]

I feel like people keep asking the same question over and over again. Every interview, Yoshi P touches on this subject. Third party tools like reshade are fine. Tools that give an unfair advantage such as housing bots, market bots, gathering bots, AOE overlays or whatever they are called, things like that is not allowed. Cosmetic things are fine but as he says, just be quiet about it. I don't use it because my FPS would drop to 10 if I even tried lol FF14 isn't a competitive FPS, sharpening images won't make you play better. Yoshi P has even stated that parsers aren't bad per-se, but it can bring toxicity to the community so they won't be officially endorsed.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I'm just going to say this. Hvinire would not have posted that response unless he got the OK from SE hq in Japan. That message went through yoship and possibly even their legal team before it was posted.

[Alien_Gamer]

Keep in mind, SE's default position is no third party app is allowed; thats just a legal standpoint they can point to when necessary if they need to go after someone using it. Yoshi's default position has always been as long as you're not a d**k about using something and its not hurting anyone then he doesn't really care. He'll never come out and say they're officially allowed but they aren't going to go after anyone for it. I suppose if you were to try and use reshade to somehow harass someone with it on a stream then they might come after you...but thats kinda stretching things.

This game has a large community of modders, housing designers and gposers (...that last sounded better in my head) and yoshi has stated repeatedly that he enjoys seeing the things people have on display. I don't think he's going to want to do something to stifle those communities unless we (the playerbase) push him into a corner and make him do it.

[MariaArvana]

Technically: no. Square's official policy is no third party tools are allowed.

But its unlikely they'd go after someone using them unless they were shouting "I USE GSHADE, LOOK AT ME"; and even then, it'd have to be a super slow day for them to really care, since reshade/Ghsade are just graphical adjustment programs. Same thing as parsers; don't tell or show.

[MorionQ]

Meanwhile parsers ARE against ToS outright and usage is punishable, as there were reports of harassment towards players with low parser numbers. Actually, I think Stone, Sea, Sky was added as an alternative for parsers because of said harassment and console players.

The long and short of it is don’t do anything that will negatively impact other players. Which is reasonable.

[Alleluia]

I mean... NVidia has their own fork of ReShade included in GeForce Experience (under the name "Freestyle"), and FFXIV is one of the officially-supported games. (Scroll down to spot it, the list of games is Very Long.) You can even import additional/custom ReShade shaders into Freestyle by dropping them in the appropriate directory.

So if you're running GeForce Experience and have the feature turned on, congrats, you're *already* running ReShade; you could hit the hotkey and bring up the Freestyle interface in-game *right now*.

Anyway, if ReShade variants were expressly forbidden, I suspect Square-Enix would not have allowed FFXIV to be one of the officially-supported games for Freestyle.

I definitely, hypothetically use this to increase the color saturation in the game. I swear it used to be brighter and they toned it down at some point. My character's hair hasn't changed colors but its not nearly as vibrant as it used to be.

[Amnmaat]

My only worry about them allowing this is how it might make them not want to improve the game's anti-aliasing and adding other shaders to the game natively to the game. While plug-ins like reshad/nvidia freestyle are great, they are not native to the client itself, and they should seriously upgrade the game's shaders going into further expansions, mainly as an introduction to ps5 to get even more people into upgrading.