It’s a known fact within the gaming community that Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 14 has always had an issue with stalking and harassment. Last year’s blacklisting changes were supposed to fix things, but it seems like it has now had the opposite reaction.
The Final Fantasy 14 community has come across a mod called PlayerScope that allows anyone to breach a player’s privacy in the game. While many thought Square Enix wouldn’t take action against this mod, the company is preparing for a legal battle against the staking mod.
In a brand-new statement, Naoki Yoshida, who’s known better as Yoshi-P by fans, has detailed how Square Enix is planning to deal with the terror of PlayerScope mod.
Yoshi-P has confirmed that PlayerScope is being used to collect player data in Final Fantasy 14 that shouldn’t be visible to other players and is requesting that the mod is taken offline. If this doesn’t happen, Square Enix won’t shy away from taking the legal route to the situation.
The tool is being used to display a segment of an FFXIV character’s internal account ID, which is then used in an attempt to further correlate information on other characters on the same FFXIV service account.
Why is PlayerScope such a dreaded mod by the entire Final Fantasy community? Well, it’s due to a lot of factors. This plugin can basically access the names of all characters and retainers linked with any account, gameplay activity, where someone has been, and when they logged in. It’s simply a huge overreach for a third-party mod and has the potential to be used by stalkers.
Worse, even if you don’t want your information to be collected by this mod, you must join the mod’s Discord server. PlayerScope isn’t the only plugin that can do this either; anyone can easily get all the information they want if they’re committed enough, even if the mod vanishes tomorrow, thanks to the game’s client making all data available.
With an official statement, Yoshi-P has confirmed that personal information attached to Square Enix accounts, such as payment information, is not visible. It remains to be seen if PlayerScope is taken offline or if the company will take further action.
Final Fantasy‘s series producer Yoshinori Kitase and title director Naoki Hamaguchi chatted with Famitsu and opened up about Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3. It seems like Hamaguchi is satisfied with the current progress of the game and states that it’s going “very well.”
According to the industry veteran, Square Enix hasn’t encountered any major problems while developing the game so far. Kitase also confirmed once again that the studio has already wrapped up the story section of the game.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake took five years in active development, and that doesn’t include pre-production. On the other hand, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth took the developers around four years to get around. Rebirth would’ve hit the shelves much sooner if it wasn’t for the global pandemic.
Considering all these factors, we could see Square Enix dropping the final installment in this remake trilogy as early as 2027. Just like the first two games, it might be a timed PlayStation exclusive before coming to PC.
With that said, do you think Square Enix should’ve responded to the stalking mod much earlier? Let us know in the comments below.
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