How to fix the latest PR nightmare!

[Novae]

This "drama" only affects social media attention seekers. Again.

[Denji]

As we know the announcement was made then very shortly after streamers were the first targets of report brigading but it is now spreading to exploiting the system.

You are behind the curve SE and need to get control of the narrative because this entire ban hammer approach is absolutely horrible PR for the MMO currently.

1. Yoshi P needs to issue a statement reversing the current bans with a go forward policy regarding the use of add ons that conflict with SE policy. Sorry but you gave zero notice then immediately started issuing bans.

2. Hiding behind "well we told you guys before" after Yoshi P gave a 30 minute answer effectively green lighting certain add ons is pretty ridiculous.

3. Report brigading needs to be treated as a bannable offense if it is abused which is definitely is currently being used for right now.

There is no bad PR.

The servers aren't region locked and the laws in Japan state that Square needs to make a reasonable effort to prevent such modifications. If one of those 3rd party tools were updated and became malware, cryptominer or a botnet then according to Japanese law then Square could be held accountable if they simply ignored it.

Like, up to 3 years prison + a fine for simply cracking software/modifying it and that's per "incident". It also applies to any company that doesn't take what is described as a reasonable amount of effort to prevent it.

[MiaShino]

Shhhhh Square is on a PR nightmare kill streak right now. Let them have this.

Just few more really really bad ideas and we might need another moon to fall.

[Derio]

It was not Zero notice. IT has been in the TOS for years. Lodestone posts about it for years. Even when they did the big TOS update they reiterated it again. And here we are in 2022 where they are yet again stating it. The streamers who use third party tools and choose to show they are using it are playing with fire and sometimes when you play with fire you are going to get burned.

[Johners]

1. Yoshi P needs to issue a statement reversing the current bans with a go forward policy regarding the use of add ons that conflict with SE policy. Sorry but you gave zero notice then immediately started issuing bans.

They didn't need to give notice, it was already against the terms of service, how is that hard to understand? All third-party tools are against the terms of service, don't use any of them.

2. Hiding behind "well we told you guys before" after Yoshi P gave a 30 minute answer effectively green lighting certain add ons is pretty ridiculous.

He never greenlit it, he asked people to not do certain things like lewd modding or harassing people with damage meters. People didn't do this and some even outright cheat.

3. Report brigading needs to be treated as a bannable offense if it is abused which is definitely is currently being used for right now.

There's no way of knowing if someone was actually report brigading and trying to ban people for this is futile.

[Cach]

IMHO the only bad message this sends is that you need a brigade team to get something done.
Now if they just did that to serious offenders instead...

[D6Damager]

Conspiracy Theory #1: Streamer probably wanted to get banned, because it brings more attention to their stream.

[Kolsykol]

This is just concern trolling at this point...

I don't even understand why some of you play this game when you seem to do nothing but complain and hate on it and the devs for the most ridiculous of reasons.

[Myrany]

I rather hope that SE makes some fixes to UI customization and then puts software to detect 3rd party software on our machines. I really do. Yes SE will take a hit in subscribers for awhile. Yes the outrage will be enormous. Doing this will accomplish a few things.

It will instantly neutralize reporting/ban trains. SE will be able to say we use our own internal data not these reports.

It will finally put an end to any number of bots that are plaguing the game from PvP to Crafting to MB to gathering. These I personally feel are a whole lot bigger of a problem than what is being gone after now.

It will be a completely even playing field. Everyone will know if you use 3rd party software you are toast.

Will SE do this? Probably not. I really do wish they would.

[MiaShino]

I rather hope that SE makes some fixes to UI customization and then puts software to detect 3rd party software on our machines. I really do. Yes SE will take a hit in subscribers for awhile. Yes the outrage will be enormous. Doing this will accomplish a few things.

It will instantly neutralize reporting/ban trains. SE will be able to say we use our own internal data not these reports.

It will finally put an end to any number of bots that are plaguing the game from PvP to Crafting to MB to gathering. These I personally feel are a whole lot bigger of a problem than what is being gone after now.

Square already possesses all of the means to detect botting server side yet for some reason choses not to implement it.

Auto out of bounds detection? Not present.
Wrong warp detection? Nope!
Extended session activity detection? Nada.

You do not want anti-cheat trust a Mia. This is actually case of you think you do but you do not. They are notorious for adding performance issues whilst easily being circumvented and for false positives. Took OBS some time to fix game capture mode anticheat bypass and it still does not always work.