Screenshot failed

[Huntress]

A good way to test if it is your anti-virus causing the issue is go in game then turn off anti-virus (only temp turn off so don't worry) and wait a min or two then try to take a picture, if it goes through then you know for sure the anti-virus is blocking it without telling you it's blocking, mine didn't tell me at all it was doing that.

Anti-virus Exception:
What I did is I went into my anti-virus and went to exceptions. I browsed to the game folder which for me is found, C: drive under program files x86 SquareEnix then went into the ff14 folder, there I saw a folder called "game" I made the whole game folder an exception. After I set that I went to my documents folder and set the whole folder, which for me is called, final fantasy xiv a realm reborn, and I set that as an exception. Doing both of those worked for me. I did try just putting "ffxiv_dx11.exe" and ffxiv.exe as exceptions first before doing anything else but it didn't work, which is why I just made fully both folders exceptions.

Also keep trying to take pictures when you add a file to exception list, that way you can kinda pin-point which folder work once you did it.

If none of that works, keep trying to add any ff14 folders you think might be blocked to your exception list, hopefully that will work.

[EmoriNova]

Update: It works for me now! SUCCESS!

1. I went into my antivirus program an added all my FFXIV files and apps as Trusted Apps to exclude from shields/scans. I also made the game files Exceptions as described above by Huntress. This did NOT work.
2. I went to my various protection settings and one-by-one turned off all my shields, then on again to see which one it was. I would test taking a screenshot after taking down one shield at a time (Core shields for malware, Remote Access shield, Firewall, Ransomware shield).
3. Ultimately none of them affected it EXCEPT "Ransomware Shield." When I turned this off suddenly screenshots would save.
4. I went into detailed settings and it says "Stop ransomware and untrusted apps from changing, deleting or holding your personal folders or files hostage." In these settings there was an option to "stop protecting my Documents folder." (Documents is where my "My Games" and FFXIV files are saved. I removed My Documents from this shield list and the screenshots worked again.
5. After doing this, I then went and moved all my documents from my documents folder to a different folder to be sure everything was still protected except the game.

This same issue was happening with my roommate and when he followed this fix it started working for him again too. Hopefully this is helpful to others!

[Huntress]

Thanks for putting out what you did to get it to work. My anti-virus doesn't have layers of shields, just one setting where I can add exceptions but I know some people who do and I had no idea what they need to do for it, now I can just point them to this. If anyone else finds ways pass their anti-virus to get their screenshots to work again, post here, seems like different anti-virus programs are for some reason blocking this for whatever reason.

[Zikio]

Update: Seemed the update did something to make my anti-virus block it. I ended up making the game folder and the screenshot folder exceptions which seemed to have fixed the problem, I am able to screenshot again.

Can confirm, made an exemption for the .exe (not the launcher) and screenshots are properly functioning again.

[Addy]

Sweet, I'll try this when I get home since it seems you and I might have the same virus program.

[Addy]

Update: It works for me now! SUCCESS!

1. I went into my antivirus program an added all my FFXIV files and apps as Trusted Apps to exclude from shields/scans. I also made the game files Exceptions as described above by Huntress. This did NOT work.
2. I went to my various protection settings and one-by-one turned off all my shields, then on again to see which one it was. I would test taking a screenshot after taking down one shield at a time (Core shields for malware, Remote Access shield, Firewall, Ransomware shield).
3. Ultimately none of them affected it EXCEPT "Ransomware Shield." When I turned this off suddenly screenshots would save.
4. I went into detailed settings and it says "Stop ransomware and untrusted apps from changing, deleting or holding your personal folders or files hostage." In these settings there was an option to "stop protecting my Documents folder." (Documents is where my "My Games" and FFXIV files are saved. I removed My Documents from this shield list and the screenshots worked again.
5. After doing this, I then went and moved all my documents from my documents folder to a different folder to be sure everything was still protected except the game.

This same issue was happening with my roommate and when he followed this fix it started working for him again too. Hopefully this is helpful to others!

Thank you <3 this worked!

[Inzoum]

I went through the trouble of filing a full bug report about this issue and the post just got tossed back here instead of being adressed in any manner. Considering that this started happening only after the latest patch, Squar Enix likely changed something that causes antivirus software to treat it as an undesirable program (and blocks writing to Documents). It’s arguably shared responsibility between antivirus software and whatever the heck Square did to their Exe in the latest patch, but this needs a fix, not everyone goes on the forum to check for answers. My solution in the end was to write to D:\FFXIV SCREENSHOTS\ and call it a day, but this definitely broke for me and others with the last patch when it was working fine prior. neither my Windows installation or antivirus software got an update in the meantime, its 100% the game patch.

[Warkupo]

Update: It works for me now! SUCCESS!

1. I went into my antivirus program an added all my FFXIV files and apps as Trusted Apps to exclude from shields/scans. I also made the game files Exceptions as described above by Huntress. This did NOT work.
2. I went to my various protection settings and one-by-one turned off all my shields, then on again to see which one it was. I would test taking a screenshot after taking down one shield at a time (Core shields for malware, Remote Access shield, Firewall, Ransomware shield).
3. Ultimately none of them affected it EXCEPT "Ransomware Shield." When I turned this off suddenly screenshots would save.
4. I went into detailed settings and it says "Stop ransomware and untrusted apps from changing, deleting or holding your personal folders or files hostage." In these settings there was an option to "stop protecting my Documents folder." (Documents is where my "My Games" and FFXIV files are saved. I removed My Documents from this shield list and the screenshots worked again.
5. After doing this, I then went and moved all my documents from my documents folder to a different folder to be sure everything was still protected except the game.

This same issue was happening with my roommate and when he followed this fix it started working for him again too. Hopefully this is helpful to others!

Worked for me as well, thanks!

[OneIlmPunch]

I had this problem as well, don't forget if you have the game running while making the exceptions in your antivirus you'll probably need to restart FFXIV before it'll work. I was going nuts because I did everything right but it still wouldn't let me take screenshots. Relaunching the game fixed it though, I'm such a dummy!

[Kirika-]

I went through the trouble of filing a full bug report about this issue and the post just got tossed back here instead of being adressed in any manner. Considering that this started happening only after the latest patch, Squar Enix likely changed something that causes antivirus software to treat it as an undesirable program (and blocks writing to Documents). It’s arguably shared responsibility between antivirus software and whatever the heck Square did to their Exe in the latest patch, but this needs a fix, not everyone goes on the forum to check for answers. My solution in the end was to write to D:\FFXIV SCREENSHOTS\ and call it a day, but this definitely broke for me and others with the last patch when it was working fine prior. neither my Windows installation or antivirus software got an update in the meantime, its 100% the game patch.

Typically, some of the AV software works by looking for a change in an existing program or library, then it flags that change as a source of suspicious activity.
The logic behind this is that when a virus 'infects' a program by appending it's code to the programs code, this changes the program very slightly as per what some AV programs use to take a 'snap shot' of the program in it's 'not infected' state.
This generally works fine as a 'good' program doesn't change itself over time, and if it does then maybe there is a virus.
However, as games and other online types of programs get updates and patches, quite regularly, the 'snap shot' state that AV program sees is then different.

This type of AV 'hostility' to updated games and such, is actually a sign of a very poor quality AV program, as it means it is relying more heavily on looking for program changes than actually looking for virus and virus-like code.
The AV program's company needs to address the function by updating it's methodology and definitions, so that a legitimate patched program isn't seen as an infection.
If the AV program has a "Heuristics" based real time functionality, that might be set to a lower sensitivity setting, which would then make it be less freaked out each time FF14 gets a patch, otherwise tell your AV program vendor to fix their poo.