Just give us a list of what addons we can use.

[Necrotica]

Cause I hear Gshade is okay. But that is still 3rd part.

And while we joke about the discord thing, that is a legit TOS breaker.

So we need a list of what is okay.

[Atreides]

While we're at it, isn't Playstation Network 3rd party too? It has multiple functions that directly interfere with the game, friendlist, calls...
In all seriousness the crusade some people started with the mass reporting streamers goes too far, they are seriously harming people and this is full on malicious intend.

[thereal_aliceanders]

How about we focus on fixing the game...I know crazy idea right!

[Faafetai]

How about we focus on fixing the game...I know crazy idea right!

They were the ones who said they were going to improve quality of life for the Ui and such. Lets see what they do. I am sure it will be great. Just like minecraft when they stole mods, I mean made similar content in their base game. Or Fallout where they made lower quality versions of cosmetic mods after copyright striking the creators so they could try to sell the items to people afterwards, after getting salty at modders, also after for years they would be the ones to make the game actual function half the time.

[Ranaku]

No, gshade is also against the ToS. So short answer, none. No addons are allowed. None are okay. Not a single mod or plugin.

Long answer, if it doesn't affect others in their gameplay like scripts that allow you to cheat in pvp and harassment of players with damage meters and all that it is TOLERATED BUT STILL NOT ALLOWED and you use it AT YOUR OWN RISK. They won't murder their whole playerbase, cause everyone nowdays is using some sort of mod or plugin, cause that would deal a huge blow to the stock and shareholders hate that and thus the company cause losing money is not what a company really likes. But only cause certain stuff is generally tolerated, IF YOU DON'T JUST GO TO TOWN WITH IT, doesn't mean they can't just decide to swing the banhammer to smite you. The streamer that set this hell lose we find ourselves in atm got too confident and was streaming with their damage meter tool VISIBLE ON THEIR STREAM WHILE THIS IS NOT NECESSARY.

There is also a difference between things that run outside of the game, like discord does. Discord has, if used right, no direct interaction with the game. Same as every other voicechat software. I mean SE isn't sending you to gaol cause you have youtube open or your browser, or cause you run your operating system besides the game. Tho if you run the Edge browser you definitely deserve gaol time.

So no, we need no list cause there won't be a list cause everything that interacts with the game itself and the data in and from it is a offense. It is not that hard to understand. If it interacts in any way with the data of the game, modifies gamefiles or reads data from the game to display something it is against the ToS. If a voicechat runs AS A SEPARATE SOFTWARE THAT DOESN'T INTERACT WITH ANY OF FFXIV DATA then it is allowed. Overlays ofc are again a modification of some sorts so not allowed but you can deactivate discord overlays easily.

[MintnHoney]

No, gshade is also against the ToS.

YoshiP stated otherwise.

[Vahlnir]

YoshiP stated otherwise.

Years ago, yeah. An update would be nice after the announcement yesterday.

[Kyrj]

YoshiP stated otherwise.

He's said a lot of things....

[Ranaku]

YoshiP stated otherwise.

Yeah well i know of one statement of a community representative, Hvinire said it would be alright i think.

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.

There we go. Yeah that seems to be a problem since it is not clarified anywhere that these are alright. Which makes it really...well...unsafe cause they can decide without giving any notice that it's now not allowed anymore.

But yeah, reshade and gshade don't interact with the gamedata itself i believe but work through directx itself. Thus it doesn't interact with the gamedata itself BUT gshade as far as i know uses an overlay system for the game which would mean it does interact with gamedata since it starts automatically as soon as the game starts. Which would be a modification of the installation folder which would be, i say probably cause we don't know how SE sees this, probably a violation. But yeah that is speculation, we don't know it and it would be nice to get some fresh statements from the dev team/SE.

[Packetdancer]

Yeah well i know of one statement of a community representative, Hvinire said it would be alright i think.

In 2013, I will note. I've pointed out that post myself on various occasions in the past, but we should recognize that the policy may have changed since then.

But yeah, reshade and gshade don't interact with the gamedata itself i believe but work through directx itself. Thus it doesn't interact with the gamedata itself BUT gshade as far as i know uses an overlay system for the game which would mean it does interact with gamedata since it starts automatically as soon as the game starts.

The super-simplified version of how ReShade or GShade works is by replacing either the Direct 3D or DXGI DLLs with their own version. That version mostly just passes things through to DirectX, but takes the opportunity to do post-processing on the actual output framebuffer. The in-game overlay is not, technically, happening in the game code, but in the DirectX pipeline.

However, it is happening in the game's process; the way it intercepts and proxies DirectX is by putting its own DLL in the game's folder; programs will load their own local version of DirectX before falling back to the system one, which means the game goes to load DirectX and loads the shader system instead (which then loads DirectX on the game's behalf).

The practical upshot of which is that ReShade cannot modify the game's actual operating code in any way, but it can modify the framebuffer after the game is done with it. (Which is how the menu overlay for ReShade works; it's just stamped on top of the end result of the game's rendering code.)

Conversely, Nvidia's Freestyle (their own ReShade equivalent, albeit with far fewer built-in shaders and a maximum of 4 presets) happens down in Nvidia's driver layer, meaning the code for Freestyle is not actually in the FFXIV process; arguably, it falls into the same area as monitor color calibration and such.

So if you really wanted to get nitpicky on the technical details, it would be possible for them to say ReShade and its forks are formally prohibited, but still allow Freestyle.

I do not think they're likely to enforce the ToS against ReShade/GShade, no. Aesthetic mods that do not alter the game's operation are unlikely to be high-value targets for enforcement, I'd imagine.

But that doesn't mean I think it would be super smart to stream while using it, because I can absolutely imagine people maliciously reporting people, and I don't think anyone's put to the test how hard the hammer will come down if they're forced to go pay attention to something instead of allowing it to skate beneath the radar.

(Whereas if you're posting just images, there's some degree of plausible deniability. Even if they know you probably used ReShade or GShade, if they're not super keen on enforcing it they can easily dismiss it with "Well, it might've been a normal unchanged screenshot they did things to in Photoshop.")