An infamous Final Fantasy 14 plugin that MMO fans warned could enable stalking and harassment has now been shut down after those behind it apparently received a cease and desist.
Earlier this year, despite Final Fantasy 14's Dawntrail expansion adding new blacklist features to help combat issues like harassment in the MMORPG, it was discovered that the addition had made it so that each player had a unique account ID broadcasted to the game's client. Third-party mods and plugins could be used to essentially link characters to their player IDs, making it possible to track down any player's alternate accounts in the process, enabling stalking in the game. A prominent example of such was a plugin called PlayerScope.
Square Enix had previously addressed this, having reassured fans that such tools couldn't access things like payment information, and later made a change in patch 7.2, saying that "to help prevent the identification of account IDs that are not displayed in-game, relevant saved client data has been reset." However, players quickly discovered that it was "very easy" to reverse the new efforts to hide account IDs, and thus, concerns weren't really alleviated.
Fast forward to today, and a different form of action has seemingly been taken. In a message allegedly taken from Discord (that's been posted to Reddit), it's explained: "Due to a formal cease and desist notice I received, I've made the decision to permanently shut down the PlayerScope project and all of its supporting infrastructure."
The PlayerScope developer states that "the web backend has been taken offline," while "all stored data, including character and user records have been permanently and irreversibly deleted." Meanwhile, files for the plugin have been "completely removed from GitHub and FitFlic, and have also been fully erased from my personal server."
Moving forward, "there will be no further updates, support, or development from my side, and I am officially stepping away from plugin development entirely," the dev continues. "If any versions of the plugin continue to circulate elsewhere, please be aware that they are not authorized or associated with me in any way."
That latter point is something which players reacting to the news on Reddit are still wary of, however – even if PlayerScope is gone, that doesn't mean that other similar plugins can't be used for the same purpose. Sure, the people running them might be a bit scared about doing so after seeing action taken against the main mod, but unless Square Enix can ensure that there's no way to link player IDs with alternate accounts (or view player IDs in the first place, really), then there's still a risk there.
"This doesn't actually solve anything unless they patch the issue that allowed the plugin to exist in the first place, it's a completely hollow gesture," one concerned player writes. "Other databases for the plugin already exist and anyone can and will continue to use them or make new ones until it's patched."
"Someone probably already has a backup made. While legal threats can slow it down, unless SE implements a better blacklist, this isn't going away," says another.
It's still a positive thing to see Square Enix take concerns seriously like this, though. Way back in January, director and producer Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida revealed that the team was internally discussing "requesting that the tool in question be removed and deleted" and potentially "pursuing legal action," so it's not like this development has come out of nowhere. Now then, we'll just have to hope some better account ID obfuscation is on the way, too.
