In case you're unfamiliar with the Final Fantasy 14 community, recently, a mod named Mare Lamentorium—which had many thousands of users at its peak—was sent a cease & desist order. The mod in question allowed players to share their modded appearances with each other, either via an individual code, or by allowing players to join 'syncshells'.
From a community standpoint, Mare was used in two ways—either for innocuous roleplayers or outfit enthusiasts to customise their character, say, by giving a human model pointy ears—or, and I say this without judgement, smut. There is an enormous underground modding scene in Final Fantasy 14, covering both adult and non-adult content.
The biggest issue being that addons are against the terms of service of Final Fantasy 14—however, Square Enix will only take action if a player is obviously cheating, or if they are reported for mod use. In other words, players don't get banned for having a DPS meter, they get banned for using that DPS meter to chew out their party members in-game.
Community uproar around Mare Lamentorium's been loud, however—loud enough that game director Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) has felt the need to create an extensive blog post on the subject.
At the start of this blog post, Yoshi-P asks media outlets (hey, that's me!) to "Please do not summarize or provide only excerpts." This obviously puts me in a tough spot, given it's my job to add context to videogame news—especially as someone with thousands of hours in this game, and a foot in its roleplay community.
Some summarising is inevitable, because it's my job to talk about things that have happened in informative ways. That being said, please read the full blog, linked above, before drawing conclusions from anything I say.
Yoshi-P writes: "Firstly, while I am in charge of FF14, I am also a PC gamer, and have been for many years. I've spoken about this multiple times in the past, but my own personal stance regarding mods─that I do tolerate them─has not changed. In the past twenty or so years, I've seen numerous positive examples of games with fan-made mods that expand upon existing gameplay."
He then goes on to reiterate what he's said before, that "these mods are generally created with a vital premise in mind: they are for personal use only, and the individual player is responsible for the mods they use. Furthermore, the mods must not impact the core game, its services, or the intended game design in a negative manner. I personally feel that these rules should be followed by all mod creators and users."
Yoshi-P then goes on to mention a few things that cross this line. Again, I encourage you to read the full blog for context, but to briefly summarise, it's mostly a list of problems that Mare Lamentorium caused—even though he's (understandably) careful not to invoke its name, or single any mod out.
Either because it infringes upon player enjoyment, like modding your weapon to look like an Ultimate reward (and then, more importantly, sharing that modded appearance with others)—or because 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."
The specifics, which I shan't attempt to summarise out of respect for Yoshi-P's direct request, are less important than the tone here, which is refreshingly earnest and non-judgemental. He makes a repeated point that none of this is a discussion on whether "that behavior is right or wrong".
"Allow me to repeat myself," he writes, "When I say that I do not intend for these examples to be a censure of mod users or creators. I only wish to provide some tangible examples of how using certain mods can damage other players, FF14, and the services we provide, regardless of the mod's original intent."
It's the most mod-positive we've seen Yoshi-P so far. While the 'don't ask, don't tell' circumstances have been more of a community assumption made by players, matching his words to Square's actual actions and the proliferation of mod use, this is absolutely an olive branch to the modding community. A clear and adult explanation of what is and isn't acceptable.
There's even some hope for improved glamour systems, too: "As always, we will do our utmost to keep creating a world which all players can enjoy. Even though it may take time to do so, it is my hope to incorporate player feedback and officially fulfill as many functionality requests as possible. I am also considering how to increase the freedom of choice players have in the gear they choose to equip.
"While paying respect to the long-standing tradition of modding PC games, I ask that all players in turn respect our game by enjoying their fun within the confines of some basic rules."
If you've been following my writing on Final Fantasy 14, you'll know I can get a bit grumpy about the state of the game sometimes—but I think this blog post is unequivocally reasonable and well put-together. And I hope, as I imagine Yoshi-P might, that it does enough to ease the frayed tensions after Mare went a little too far over that line in the sand.
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