Final Fantasy XIV Director Clarifies Problematic Mods Policy After Popular Mod Shut Down

In a lengthy post today Final Fantasy XIV game director Naoki Yoshida clarified the game's stance on using mods. This comes after one of the game's most popular mods "Mare Synchronos" was taken offline after a receiving a "legal inquiry". The mod was a platform of sorts that allowed users to register custom visuals and animations which were 'synced' to the mod's servers and created a shared experience by everyone else using the same mode. According to the mod's developer it had 130,000 active users over the last 30 days before shutdown.

In the post, Naoki Yoshida explained that using mods that alter one's own visuals and gameplay is tolerated as it's perceived as personal use and doesn't negatively effect others. The example used in the post was a player using a mod to equip an ultimate weapon, which is normally only earned after defeating one of the game's hardest raids. On the player's end they can see their character with the ultimate weapon, but others in the game would only see them using a regular weapon. This kind of mod is considered permissable, but if a mod like the now removed "Mare Synchronos" was involved, other players would be able to create a shared experience syncing their mods, which made it so players who didn't 'earn' those ultimate weapons would be able to use them and other mod users would see them with the weapon. The game director considered this as unfair to to the players who earned the weapon.

Shared mods through "Mare Synchronos" also clearly hurt monetization for the game as Mr. Yoshida pointed out that players who could obtain custom emotes/animations through modding would have no need to purchase them through the cash shop.

ERP (erotic roleplaying) mods were also specifically called out, although indirectly:

Let's consider another theoretical mod: one that displays your character entirely naked. If this presentation is displayed only on the user's screen, that might fall into the category of personal use and responsibility. (Bear in mind that this is my personal interpretation, and not a discussion of whether that behavior is right or wrong.) However, if the user posts a screenshot of their naked character publicly on social media, FFXIV itself may be subject to legal measures by regulators in certain countries. -Excerpt (full post)

It's amusing that this was presented as a 'theoretical' mod. Anyone who has played Final Fantasy XIV long enough knows that there is an enormous community of players who participate in ERP and that there are countless mods that help facilitate such behavior. Everything from custom animations to visual enhancements.

The theoretical mod highlighted by Mr. Yoshida was not specifically called out as 'not allowed', but rather presented as problematic and could cause the company legal issues. The framing suggests that such mods could eventually be disallowed.

I imagine this post will receive significant backlash from the Final Fantasy XIV community, as a huge part of Final Fantasy XIV uses these kinds of mods to enhance their experience. The policy won't impact raiders who use DPS tracking mods, but roleplayers, especially ERPers, who want a shared modded experience are basically screwed. It's not like the official cash shop is ever going to offer the kinds of emotes these roleplayers are looking for.

My own opinion is that this is shortsighted bad policy which will only hurt the game's subscribers and engagement metrics. Arguably the change was made to encourage people to get their fix for cosmetics and animations from the cash shop instead of mods, but the reality is that the cash shop in Final Fantasy XIV is lacking. While majority of Final Fantasy XIV players likely never used such mods, a very active minority of players exclusively played Final Fantasy XIV because of the modding scene. For those players, the loss of shared experience mods like Mare Synchronos may be reason enough to quit the game entirely.

Further reading: Official post