Square Enix is doing more to tackle real-money trading in Final Fantasy 14.
In a new blog post, the developer shares that plans are in motion to increase staffing, upgrade tools, and add new procedures to prevent people from making real-life profits in-game and "provide our community with a safe and secure gaming experience".
While Square Enix does provide weekly updates on how many accounts have been banned – that number was 3,293 last week – the developer admits it's still observing "a certain level of RMT activity", leading it to action.
"We are aware of groups that engage in RMT, which we refer to as 'RMT vendors,' whose only goal is to make real-life profit," the developer says. "These vendors do not care about adhering to the User Agreement and will often obstruct the gameplay of normal players to benefit themselves. Furthermore, RMT vendors very commonly engage in real-life criminal activity, such as the unauthorized access of accounts and the use of stolen credit card information.
"The majority of items and Gil sold through RMT were produced as a result of such fraudulent activity. Purchasing from RMT vendors promotes these fraudulent activities and is prohibited under the FINAL FANTASY XIV User Agreement. Furthermore, as a reminder, doing so also leads to promoting activities deemed illegal in real-life."
Like most online games, Final Fantasy 14 has its fair share of people offering services for real-world money – account boosting, naughtier stuff, you get it. As anyone who has played an online game with a chat function can attest, advertisements for those services are somewhat unavoidable regardless of what you're doing. Square Enix's advice on that, for now, is to continue ignoring those messages and report them when you see them.
"We strongly encourage players to refrain from engaging with these groups, as there would be no reason for RMT vendors to exist if players do not use their services," Square Enix says.
As part of its crackdown on RMT, Square Enix has also changed its gifting policy on the online store.
"This change was implemented as a countermeasure against fraudulent purchases made using the previous version of the gifting feature, as we confirmed instances of gift codes being purchased for the purpose of resale, as well as real-life criminal activity where purchases were potentially made using stolen credit card information," the developer explains.
It hasn't been confirmed what items can be gifted and which can't, though players have figured out that mounts, emotes, and minions are the main casualties. Fantasia, story skips, and gear cosmetics, however, seem fine.
On the bright side, Final Fantasy 14's Halloween event is actually in time for Halloween this year, and a recent patch fixed one of the MMO's most annoying PvP bugs.
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