Why isn’t the third party software ban enforced?

[Tsukino]

Two main reasons, which are mostly separate but each have a bunch of complicated little parts to them.

First, as already mentioned, they can't actually tell if anything is running on someone's PC that doesn't alter the game. So things that take data from the game like parsers or notifications are basically undetectable. This is distinct from things like bots, which do get caught, because they interact back with the game and create conspicuous behavior. It's not strictly illegal, but they wouldn't have as many subscriptions as they do if their TOS let them install spyware.

Second, when it comes to the many other ways they could (and in some people's opinion, should) find people and take action, such as streamers visibly using the tools, people uploading parse data, etc., they're simply deciding based on the assumption of profit, like most any company. They want the subscription fees of as many people as possible, including the cheaters. Additionally, they consider the potential difference in subscriber numbers based on PR - right now, they probably believe there would be "collateral" loss over the reception of banning a bunch of people for using tools, but if there was somehow massive data showing that the opposite was the case then they would probably do it instead. As a hyperbolic example, if there was a petition out there with a million signatures saying they would pay for FFXIV but for all the cheating they see on Twitch, then they could easily ban a few hundred or thousand raiders and come out ahead.

tl;dr: Game companies don't really care about anything but money, even if some specific people who work there obviously care about other things, and even if sometimes the things they do to make money involve looking like they care about something. Like all companies.

[Stigmar]

Pretty sure the answer to your question was covered in a live letter long as people use the rule "We don't talk about fight club" and long as no one uses it to harassment of other players they said they would turn a blind eye to it as for plugins pretty sure the only ones they do ban people for are the ones that change how the game works like that time that ult group used a plugin to change the waymarkers mid fight now thats a big no no and they patched it out pretty quickly.

As call outs and things eeeeh I can't imagine it not being much different than your team mate calling it out discord as good group will have one person doing that anyway usually the tank or the raid team leader but at the end of the day is it really hurting anyone? Does it change how you play? I mean people gonna do what they need to do to enjoy the game their way, even I use a modded controller to play the game one handed since I only got the one would you say thats consider against terms of service? Probably tho shout out to Ben Heck for making it and supporting the disabled gaming community.

Also fun fact if you were here when 2.0 was being made they did say they would try allow plugins or a feature to make plugins as it was a major thing for FFXI everyone used windower back then but because it was to hard it add to console version it ended up being scraped but hey one the bright side ps4 and ps5 users will see their very first plugin coming next year with discord being added to psn so thats a thing right?