Is GShade allowed?

[Welsper59]

I mean, assuming that was from a GM, that more recent response is basically all players need to go on to understand that it supersedes the old post nearly a decade ago. Plus, keep in mind, the post was specifically referring to a specific enb injector, something that Gshade (specifically Reshade) uses I think... but it does other things as well lol. Thus you can't take what was said even in that post and apply to a different thing, even if they function similarly.

With how things are currently just do as you always do and move on. Nothing has changed for anyone but (mostly) streamers who openly used addons/plugins. Expecting them to actually say Gshade is perfectly fine in this climate is foolish. They'd be essentially begging for people to be bad about testing the waters on what they deem to be okay.

The reality has always been that players who use unofficial tools that directly interact with this game (basically everything) has violated ToS. Severity differs obviously, but that's the reality of a blanket ToS. Not exactly a big deal. Remember how Yoshi-P directly addressed how Discord is technically a 3rd party program, but isn't something they can prove you're using exclusively to undermine FFXIVs systems, so they won't even bother with that? That's an effect of a blanket ToS. There are going to be nonsense stuff that qualifies, but that doesn't change the necessity of it for when it is more applicable. That's just for them, not for you.

Honestly, this whole thing about addons/plugins with XIV players freaking out about the ToS is so entertaining and fascinating to me, as an FFXI player. Practically everyone uses 3rd party tools in that game and the ToS is very similar lol. An overwhelming majority of players outright recognize what they're doing and try not being stupid about it. If you were unlucky and got caught, it was usually your own fault, but very bad luck could have happened as well.

Something like posting pictures using GShade is not going to get you banned, simply due to the fact that it just cannot be proven and that it's just not a big deal. That said, people need to realize its a matter of give and take. They're giving players some leeway and they always have been. Take too much however (i.e. start going overboard with addons and such) and that's when the crackdown happens. Regular players are nowhere near that yet and even further for Gshade users. Just like FFXI, the only rule regarding 3rd party tools is to not be stupid about what you're using or doing with it.