Why isn’t the third party software ban enforced?

[jamjeeshoul77]

Something about them not being able to scan your pc for content cause like that's not legal?
I dunno..

Mmm that can’t be true, otherwise Blizzard, Discord, steam, and many other highly visible companies would have been shutdown over a decade ago

[HollowedDoll]

Mmm that can’t be true, otherwise Blizzard, Discord, steam, and many other highly visible companies would have been shutdown over a decade ago

Oh you mean Blizzard that doesn't detect that you have pirated blizz stuff installed on your pc, or discord that has an entire version where you can use javascript and whatever to modify your client, or steam that has an exploit that makes it so all dlcs load?

[Penthea]

Mmm that can’t be true, otherwise Blizzard, Discord, steam, and many other highly visible companies would have been shutdown over a decade ago

Some mods communicate with the game servers so by looking at their own server data game companies can detect the use of some mods. Some other mods simulate activity you would never get from a human player, for example if you had a mod that let a bot play for you for days on end without stopping. So again a game company can scan their server data to find accounts with obvious inhuman activity like this.

Also if they see you streaming with obvious mods being used they don't even need to look at server logs to catch you in the act.

How much companies can scan your pc is a bit of a grey area, but they can only legally scan it to a point. Anti-cheat measures mostly look at server data to find player activity that wouldn't be possible with only a human player.

SE have a "don't ask don't tell" stance on some mods. Using a mod that makes the game look prettier is against the ToS but it doesn't harm the experience of other players around you and doesn't change the act of playing the game, so SE turn a blind eye as long as you don't run around chatting about it all the time in game. As for parsers, SE recognise they're excellent tools so they let players use them...as long as they never mention their use in the game itself.

As for my opinion on mods...I'm honestly glad I don't have to deal with them to be able to play the game effectively. I played WoW for a very long time and I always hated how Blizzard are extremely slow to update their ui because they can rely on third party devs to do it for them for free. Because these mods haven't been QA tested by Blizzard they can be buggy which can affect the performance of other mods and even the game itself. I dreaded patch days instead of looking forward to new content because my ui would often be broken after game updates and dealing with that was such a headache. I far prefer how it is in FFXIV, in which SE update their ui regularly and I can look forward to patch content with no stress about whether my ui will still function or not.