Going after the plugin author isn't going to stop the exploit. The problem is that the game client makes account IDs easily accessible. That's a Square Enix client vulnerability.
@jtbrown51 yes I said I agree they do need to fix that. But again it didn't give anyone the right to exploit it. I hope the take action against the guy that made this mod.
Okay, let me play devil's advocate for a bit because I'm trying to get an understanding here. What's so bad about someone knowing your account ID? As far as I know, this is not the same as account information (like username, password, credit card, etc), just an identifier of the account (this account belongs to Jane Doe).
This is weird to me as a software dev. It's their fault for exposing this information to the client. If they don't want information getting leaked... stop sending that data to the clients... The solution is on their end and the problem is something they caused with their really shitty design.
Exactly. This needs to be addressed as a software vulnerability that allows an attacker access to confidential player presence data. Treating it any other way is a blatant mischaracterization of the issue at hand. It must be treated as such by the software developer and apropriately mitigated within the code.
Having a hole in your code for potential hackers to exploit is something to be fixed, on the other hand, people who have nefarious intentions like the plugin developer need to be punished as well. Two things can be true at the same time
Yeah, it's a culture I really only see in gamedev where accountability is on the consumer. I agree that the bad actors should be punished, but in any other software engineering based industry, the company would also be liable for any resulting damages.
This is like putting a band aid over a 12 inches cut lmao. Imagine saying instead of "we'll sue the creator and please stop using it/talking about it" he'd have said "we will immediately look into resolving the issue of this privacy vulnerability and we will make sure something like this will never happen again in the future."... Yeah, imagine.
I screams of tone deaf. They mentioned nowhere about updating the black list or doing anything to protect our data. It reeks of PR jargon and I lost alot of faith i had left in Yoshi-P that he says "we'll sue the guy" And that's all they are saying
If you look at it from a company perspective this is an alarming issue, the fact that players can access this level of information means that there is a huge breach in their security which will make their investors raise some eyebrows, I think the lawsuit will be inevitable as long as they get enough information on the devs to at least drag the case out even if dismissed later on
This is such a nothingburger of a response. They aren't going to do jack shit to stop this. At least, this response doesn't actually confirm any actions will be taken at all.
@@fredy2041 What they should have said was something along the lines of: "We are working internally to remediate the exploit that this third party tool is exploiting" But instead they only talked about going after the plugin author, which is both futile and completely pointless.
@@fredy2041 They have made no indication whatsoever that they have any intention of making any changes to their backend to remediate this vulnerability. This developer post was the perfect time and place to make that statement, and yet they instead only mentioned legal disputes (which won't solve anything) and attempting to remove the third party tool (which also won't solve anything). Additionally, they have known about this vulnerability for months and have made no attempt to remediate it thus far. So all things considered, saying that they are already working on this is just completely wrong.
@ as I stated before, they already adressed it way before on the oficial forums, and again. The problem lies before even the BL was upgraded. Thi has to be compleatly overlaued, and it will take time
They could easily go after the guy but considering the time and resources it would take, I imagine they'll just adjust some code somewhere and move on and hope the warning will be enough to handle the rest.
I think they've done it as efficient as possible, but efficiency doesn't mean safety. Code could be so efficient if ppl wouldn't always try to misuse it for profit or to harm others...
The two actions listed would be fine, useless but fine, if they also acknowledged they need to work on changing the fact they're broadcasting this information unprotected and they will change this when possible. They're not accepting any culpability for the security of your information here, which makes you question the quality of the rest of their data security for your data.
wait, maybe that's the solution, combine the two, advertise the plugin on a billboard in a light that gets the fed's attention, the boomer news media will cover it and damage the PR of the game, and in a PR damage control move, SE will ACTUALLY do something about the blacklist and 3rd party tools (or do none of that and just sue the billboard under the "dont say anything bad about us" clause). bonus effect in that it will cause any illegal daters in the RP scene to immediately out themselves by complaining about the new billboard, the community will instantly know who to avoid in game or at venues
@@Diddz Lmfao. He just doesn't want to take action cause he knows once he does, he is burning down mods, which means 60% of the remaining player base. I would not be surprised he knows this and why he is trying to make the game easy for all so he can replay them and not fear the game dying out.
This stalker plugin is dangerous, especially when used by people with negative intentions. They need to deal with this sh*t quickly cause it puts the privacy of players at risk. Yoshi-P needs to do better when it comes to these types of third party tools. Saying "hey, stop it" isn't gonna do sh*t as the maker can just repost that plugin. No one should have their privacy invaded by some rando with ill will toward fellow players.
The gshade drama was crazy, the mod author put malware in the old versions because gshade always forced you to update and people were annoyed of that and tried to stop the auto updates, gshade now is alot better and just notifies you when there is an update
The reason the blacklist uses account IDs is so that if you blacklist someone on one character, it blocks all their characters. The likely legal recourse is that the plugin dev accessed confidential user/SE data
I was about to say a quick court order to git hub and you will have the username and ip address of whoever uploaded the file and anyone else that may have also uploaded another version of it, and from there its not hard to track someone down even with a vpn in place the internet isn't this wild west people think it is and a few court orders is really all it takes
The issue was reported and they chose to release it anyway, DT in alot of ways has exposed how lazy they have gotten apparently there's an EU law that opens them to being sued(not sure if this one is true or not so dont quote me on it but still) if this happens how do you get to this point I never thought I'd see this game take such a huge nose dive. The reason they don't wanna do anything is cause if they block all plugins and mods they cut the games population by at least half
I doubt any EU law applies since the information vulnerability is strictly related to in game information. Absolutely no personal information is being leaked.
*DT in alot of ways has exposed how lazy they have gotten apparently* is incredible how hyoerbolic and mature people are becoming "the have become lazy" seriously dude, search your priorities
If it shows player account IDs, it essentially has part of your login credentials. Account IDs and usernames from a cybersecurity standpoint are part of login authentication protocols used in multi factor authentication. Something you know (Usernames, passwords, pins…etc) Something you have (Token, Authenticator app, phone…etc) Something you are (Fingerprint, Face ID, Iris scan…etc) Essentially, someone out there can get access to at least one of three factors. Seems like a lawsuit might be in the works bc SE can’t enforce their own policies.
Unbelievable. Beyond ridiculous. There is a root cause that can be clearly identified and is fully within the devs' scope of action. The obvious answer is to fix the effin code. Make the logic to run server side exclusive. Even if your code is the worst imaginable code in the world you'll still be able to fix this within 2 or 3 weeks at most, and then you're done with the problem forever. How are they not already doing this? How are they not held to the industry standard of having to fix issues within their product that they are fully responsible for within an acceptable time frame?
I'm glad they're taking action but to be honest, I don't think this will stop. I think it's going to continues even if they do take down the uploader. Plus, this person is probably using a vpn.
Empty threats. They don't want to crack down on plugins because they'd lose half their subs. It's the state of the game right now. I wish they did but they still kind of somewhat like making money.
I just need people to chill the fuck out. I really like some of my customization mods, things like better teeth and custom hair. I'd be bummed as fuck to lose them because other plugin creators churn out shit like this.
The reason that Xeno has little faith in SE being able to pursue legal action against the individual is because the video game industry has a habit of not exercising their rights as a company and protecting IP. The company that does, Nintendo, constantly gets lambasted for exercising that right, even though they did set a precedent of going after an individual (we can disagree on the finer details). That all being said, if the main issue is they made information available client-side, why can't they undo this? What could possibly be tracked, or not tracked, having it server-side? Is this more unironic spaghetti code in action or just incompetency on the current coding team? I do remember XIV has swapped out who is working on the game actively, but I'm not exactly sure if people in charge of this section of game development have changed hands.
the biggest irony about all of this, is people only became "aware" of the problem because he made the plugin public, if the dude just copies this plugin, "deletes" it to avoid legality he can just make it but have it be a private plugin, also this isn't even a recent issue, this shit has been an issue 6 MONTHS and they're only responding now because they HAVE to
When it comes to law suits vs criminal suits, the burden of proof is much lower. This basically means square would only need to prove it is more probable then not probable as oppose to criminal law which requires beyond reasonable doubt. So provided they can trace the upload to the author of the plug-in I think there’s reasonable chance of it sticking. This is of course all dependent on the factors of the case and how it is presented in court.
this was apparently hosted in Russia, good luck pursueing them in Russia, it's like when people host stuff in China and then people go "GO AFTER THEM!" they literally can't, you think countries like Russia and China even bother? they'll just ignore it and shrug.
If Bungie can find someone uploading illegal music and using false copyright strikes cause he was salty, you best believe with the resources and money they have SE can find the original uploader of the plugin. The dude is a legit creep for making this. If hes in NA, he should probably be forced to register on the SO list, he's an actual threat who has no issue letting random internet ppl have crazy access to others private info for the worst of reasons. Anyone reposting it should recieve the same punishment
Legal action *could*, potentially, do a lot of good to prevent other people from making this sort of plugin. Assuming they actually found the person and got a conviction, what this plugin does would basically result in *criminal* prosecution, not just civil - meaning potential prison time, not just a fine or whatnot. That's not to say I don't think it's SE's fault, in the end, however. They definitely need to fix the issue on their end of things. Heavy legal action that results in very, very bad consequences does tend to cut down on this sort of thing. It wouldn't stop it completely, but any new plugins would never be shared on the same scale as the current plugin was. There's *always* going to be similar pieces of software whenever a vulnerability like this is discovered, because humans are terrible. But it would become much more difficult for the average person to get ahold of.
the amount of time Nintendo found their victims that created all of these emulators from around the world and sent their lawyer directly to them makes me think that yes, square enix too can search the people that made these mods and send their lawyers. but this is square enix so i don't know their capabilities, since i never once found a case that SE does similar to what nintendo do best.
we are reaching the point where the devs needs to develop features thinking "a mod could see this or can do that"? what if this wasn't the laziest way to implement the black list but the faster and easier on their systems? you also have the console players that have nothing to do with this and they are getting affected. Who knows how many features are not created due to mods? or how long until SE creates one that will be so toxic for the community that actually impacts most players?
I mean that's how it is. Yes computer client can see a lot of things hell. That doesn't excuse SE in the slightest though. That is kind of like saying "Do I need to have to lock my doors because people will walk in otherwise?" I agree however that this implementation is (a bit) easier on the servers. After all now it's your game client deciding who to block or not. That is no excuse however. I mean if you had that sort of mentality why do we use passwords to access services, why do we encrypt the data before they traverse the internet? Why do we use 2FA when accessing various services? Implementing systems where client has the authority instead of the server is just asking for trouble. The reasons they have decided to do like that are multiple - maybe the netcodeTM was already done like that (which would explain features like friendslist being awful in general too). - maybe they were lazy - or maybe they just wanted to save on server capacity Also if anything mods have contributed to features being added. Just remember how people have gotten banned for using a QoL mod just to be added in the next update. To sum it all up: Maybe an indie company which doesn't have as capable network devs could afford that. Not a giant corporation with 2! MMOs under its belt.
I don't think there's a justification to pursue legal action, since this is a plugin that only displays information that is being sent - by FF14 - to other players. So the official response is basically, "Yes, we know. Your personal information has not been leaked. We're going to tell you we're going to eventually do something about this so you'll stop yelling. Please look forward to it."
Sadly yes. Basically every game client (meaning player) gets account ids (numbers that represent the whole account!, not just character) of players and given some clever programming you can extract that number and keep note/connecting it with other characters/retainers for various purposes. The only way to not be affected by it is to not play the game.
everyone is, but don't overreact, for 99% of the playerbase this does nothing, I'd even argue 100% for a very specific reason. the current system makes anyone on your blacklist become invisible (basically don't exist as far as your game is concerned) your game also automatically filter the blacklisted person, so they can't speak to you either. this isn't a 2 way interaction though, so they can still see and maybe hear you (?) so the only time you'd see someone you blacklisted is in instanced content (dungeons, trials, raids etc) and they appear as unknown 01, 02, 03 etc, when they say something it appears in chat as "someone on your blacklist said something and is blocked" or something to that effect, you can temporary "unblock" that person and see what they're typing, it'll go back to blocked after exiting the instance though. you and me are already on that plugin, think within 3 days they had like 70-80% of the playerbase in their database, so it's likely you are in there as well, but as stated before, don't sweat it too much, this is just more an "this is yet another shit on the already piling amount of shit they're collecting" type of deal.
@@DarkDyllon finally someone with a level take on this for the vast majority of players this means nothing and this really wouldn't be major news if there was content to cover about the game but here we are
to everyone saying "SE won't do anything", well, they HAVE TO now. Japan has laws against cyberstalking and bullying. EU does as well, as does several American states. SE has a lawful obligation to prevent harassment online, which would include blocking access to personally identifiable information such as account IDs that could be tied to a person's identity.
in the EU, the GDPR in this case won't do anything due to it being a privacy regulation, which this isn't gonna fit that bill due the GDPR requiring PII (personal identifiable information) to be available to people who shouldn't have it. which in this case this isn't happening since Yoshi has already gone on record that payment info and that kind of information is not available with this plugin or this method or gathering information. if you put your real name, payment method, address etc in your FF14 character, that's 1000% on you then, but for example, my online handle is "darkdyllon" with Dyllon being my irl name, I can't go to TH-cam, Twitch, SE and any other place I used this alias and go "BUT IT'S PII!" because I chose to make it that name. But also, the current blacklist makes it so that YOU can't see the 1 stalking, so effectively they could argue that the stalking issue of over, because you don't know if you're being stalked or not. Not defending SE here, since the implementation of the current system is abysmal and they didn't do any basic security basics when making this and it's obvious and Yoshi's response is also piss poor, as plenty of others have said on both JP and english forums, this didn't address any of the actual concerns people have. But in reality, since you can't see said person, that person can't interact with you to your knowledge (a kinda "if I close my eyes, you don't exist" type of deal) even in instances, they can't communicate with you, they could emote on you I guess, but this is required since you can't expect everyone else to just bow down and make it impossible for said person to be unable to any content. what if you had a bad day in an ultimate PF (can happen) and you get kicked and black listed by the 7 other members, then you wouldn't be able to encounter them at all anymore, meaning the already bad queue times just become worse. (Although, I do agree that it should be 2 ways, so outside of instances, both can't see or hear each other, but the current version is passable at best)
this is if anything else a major L for SE, they present us with a nothing burger instead of fixing the actual problem... DT has showed us that SE is getting lazy in an excessive amount
Surely the first thing they should do is patch the game so this data can’t be accessed with addons? I’m not sure at this point it’s that they don’t care about addons - it’s probably more like they can’t stop them without rewriting the client and how it interfaces with the server. And it feels like they won’t ever do this unless something severe happens which forces them to.
You underestimate how much info they have on all of us active players who've paid for the game. Square-Enix's execs are morons who need to reinvest more of the funds gained from 14 into 14, but something like this stalker prug-in that really can't be called by any other name needs to be shut down asap before it gets out to mainstream media sources. "Final Fantasy XIV Plug-In Allows You to be Stalked (no matter what character you're on)" - is really not something that they'd want investors hearing about. Big companies like Square don't usually threaten legal action as a bluff. Especially since they have the Game Director's Account posting about it. Look at the shit Nintendo's pulled. The US legal system is completely skewed towards the rich, Japan's legal system is completely skewed towards corpos. Hell, a Japanese dentist (who fucked up the procedure) once sued a guy who left him a bad review (for screwing up the procedure). The dentist won... This is probably the one and only time I'll be happy about the fucked up nature of both countries' legal systems since it means that that bastard creator is fucked.
Can't they just make some sort of coding change to the game to break the plug-in the way World of Warcraft does when they don't want a plug-in to function in their game anymore?
Because third party tools will exist regardless, and SE has known about them nearly since their inception. This plugin existing was possible because of readily available client data and the obvious solution, not making formerly-private account information for all characters plainly visible to all clients, was not taken. It may not necessarily be their fault, but they could have reasonably prevented it and did not, and that's not a good look for the entity that's supposed to be protecting its users' data, at the very least. Obviously the person that developed this plugin has done an immensely shitty thing, because most people interested in its functions are not tech literate enough to figure out how to look at those things without it, but the creator did not technically give them access to anything their client was not allowed to know. That was a massive oversight in and of itself.
I only liked "tools" used for your own "benefit" not to ruin things for others. For example, dps meter, if you want to become better, it's very useful to see how you either keep up with other classes, or can do better with a class. It can also be fun for friends trying to compete for "shits and giggles" and see who does the best dps But moment it intrudes on others, fck that shit
If it turns out that the information attained also includes more information such as personal identifiable information or CC information via account id, then this will not be a simple case of cease and decist.
SE needs a downfall of xiv tbh. They need near total failure in order to force them to change, because literally nothing else will. They're so fucking scared of change and risk that they've essentially put the game into a borderline maintenance mode with how formulaic and lazy things have gotten. Tragic as all fuck because ive loved this game for years
whoever was in charge of the plugin, they need to take a page from nintendo and give the author the gary bowser treatment, jailtime PLUS millions in damages that also will be garnished from wages
it's just a small post telling people "it does not compromise personal SE account data" - because technically, it doesn't, while they are able to gather data in-game that is still technically public data as its sent to the client - and they basically just verified it's intended to be public by not doing anything about the actual underlying issue lol
"Please don't do that" WTF is that answer! So fking lame, the mods have gotten out of hand, its time for some sort of anti-cheat, the amount of plugins for raids is crazy too, like you dont even had to think or care for the mechanics the plugis do it all for you even your rotation. Why raiders ask for harder content when they dont even play it how is ment to be played? I finished the raid like 5 months ago and quit, didnt came back for fru bc im not that good or maybe i just dont have the plugins to be good XD Man i cant wait for the moblie version where is zero shit like this!
this comment shows how ignorant you are. I use plugins but I can function without them, even in ultimate raids, it might suck, but i'll manage. But an anti-cheat is basically the same as DRM for single player games, they only harm or hinder the legit users, rarely the offenders. Also, anti-cheat is notoriously easy to bypass without getting detected, look at CoD and it's kernel level anti-cheat, it's 1 of the 1st things that ALWAYS boot before the rest of your PC boots, the same for Easy Anti-Cheat that is in Apex Legends, the same with Valorant/League's anti-cheat, also both kernel level, yet all 4 games have cheaters.
@DarkDyllon Yeah I'm ignorant, especially on that topic because I don't use that shit. I can't take your reply seriously since you just said you're a plugin user, so i see why my comment hurt you. I'm fine with an invasive and heavy anti-cheat, the game isn't that hard to run on any PC, and with out act we dont need to have a dps focus raids so we can have fights like midas back in the hs days with fun and unique mechanics Also, yeah, everyone is ignorant, i haven't met a single person who knows everything in this world.
most players don't use mods sure you see it more at the top end of the game but even then its a small percentage I'm the only one in my group that uses any and I just use one to hit my crafting macros for me which saves me from having to press a button every min, but you can see the amount of times these mods have been used on the website and its a small fraction of the total players the game has, and the most common ones are glamour related like adding hats to viera not really the pve or raiding ones that I don't use but still looked at recently
@@Jp96115 everyone is ignorant to something yes, but if you're ignorant on the issue, then ask for clarification instead of going for the nuclear option. But also, Yoshi has already gone on record that they're never going back to HW fight design, so this is a pipe dream, but also " I can't take your reply seriously since you just said you're a plugin user, so i see why my comment hurt you" for starters, your comment doesn't hurt me, don't see why it would honestly, but disregarding an opinion because I use a plugin is also as stupid as it gets. sure I got a stake in this and don't want to lose plugins, since it makes the game a lot better to play, imagine being able to see when some nodes for gathering are up from ingame instead of needing to go through multiple windows to verify for each seperate 1. They can make fun and unique mechanics without it, but if you think that anti-cheat will stop ACT, you're also, very ignorant on this topic. anti-cheat only harms the regular user as I stated already, EVERY anti-cheat can be bypassed, even the most "evasive" as you stated, also how stupid must you be to be ok with a company opening a massive backdoor to your PC, it definitely didn't happen already that an kernel level anti-cheat got taken over and was used as a backdoor into people's computers, but you do you, I rather avoid that, unfortunately I can't with some games.
If SE takes it as seriously as Nintendo, you can be very sure the guy will be like overcooked. Btw, correction about the feedback send back on DT's release. The response was "we adressed the issue and we are looking into it" and up to this day it was not fixed. No that "we don't care, there are no problems with the BL". It was neither ignored nor said that they aren't doing anything
SE doesn't have nearly the amount that nintendo has in its coffers. 0 chance any legit legal action past a cease and desist on the github repo which I think was already done
I have a feeling that the cloud of darkness party I joined and got kicked 30 seconds later was the leader using the stalker tool. The party description was "at least 10 clears no mistakes" or something like that. So the reason I believe I was kicked was because I have my FF Logs set to private. I dont want to debate why I will always keep it that way but I think it is 100% valid. Me personally, I have to guestimate that my clears of that fight are probably between 50 - 80. Point is, I am competent, but kicked because I choose not to be judged. That's just not right.
it's up to you, but they look your character up on FFlogs (nothing about the "stalker" plugin, you literally just punch your ingame username visible to anyone into FFlogs, then you see everyone with that name and their world, just picks your character (or don't find your character) and kick you. those parties are very simple "prove you got 10 clears or get kicked" it's that simple. You are grasping at straws here, your reasoning for privating your account is your reasons and you're well within your rights to do so, but don't be surprised when people look you up, see you don't got any logs (or are privated) and just kick you, it's literally that simple.
To be fair, you can probably report them for it. While it might come to 'differences in playstyle,' you are tasking the team into looking into how this person would or would not have known to remove you. Especially if they didn't speak to you, asking you to prove your clears (screenshot clear items, achievement, whatever else is relevant to the fight). A lot of people are just complacent about pushing back on what are usually obvious third party tool use.
@@aSmolGoth it is very obvious they're using FFlogs to filter people, but they can go "i've seen this person before and made a ton of mistakes" or something like that, the GM will literally just go /shrug and move on. it's the same that someone got mad that you needed 730 ilvl to join a party, this isn't ToS breaking, yes this is technically ToS breaking, but there's 0 way to prove it, also that FFlogs is a public website, I can use it to make my judgement, regardless if SE likes it or not, but they also can't prove that I used it, and that's the deciding factor here, there's no proof that I did in fact use a 3rd party website to make my judgement.
i mean it could have also been that they recognized your name & decided that they didn't want you in their raid group. I've done it before, where i recognized someone that I didn't want to play with (usually they're toxic or something) & I just decide I'm not having it. You can't blame it all on plugins. If you have 50 - 80 clears of the fight there's bound to be someone out there that doesn't want to play with you.
You're not owed a spot and no one needs a plugin to check if your logs are hidden. You want people to recognize your "competence", but don't want to provide necessary data because you don't want to be judged, that's just delusional.
This, to me, reads as them realising they facked up by exposing important info to the client, but they don't want to admit it. Both the problem and the solution are entirely on *their end*
There is not crime here lol the only reason that Japanese people say that shit is due to laws in Japan, which are not applicable to most other countries - there is absolutely no legal basis to criminally pursue someone for making a mod that has publicly available information in the code - the code is running on your system you're intercepting information on your own device - it is 100% purely SE's fault for not maintaining the confidentiality of the information and there is no country outside of Japan that would give a fuck about this. literally all they need to do is encrypt the ID and they didn't. People have this weird obsession with the law that like if something bad happens that oh just take this person to jail or sue them for some perceived damage. in the real world you have to prove criminality and harm which there is no way to do in this case. the people with the strongest case are people who are victims of stalking but the author can just create a banner in the mod like "This software is for statistical usage only and it is against usage policy to track individuals for the purpose of identifying them or their interactions with others or enumeration of their characters in any way" the internet might as well be the wild west even in domestic cases add to that international precedents and forget it the threat is just that a threat that frankly only has teeth in Japan if even there.
This is an even more useless Cease & Desist. C&Ds are mainly used as an intimidation tactic, because the party issuing the C&D is unable to actually file a lawsuit. What Yoshi P did is even weaker than that, because not only can square not do anything about the addon, they likely cannot even find or touch the people involved. On top of that, square is likely going to get blasted by the EU with a lawsuit over their inept handling of PII due to this change.
if you think SE will shut down mods, you're delusional. SE is already sweating that they're on the brink of reaching end of SHB levels of players, atleast half of the playerbase uses mods, and you know that a good chunk of those are also relying heavily on mods for RP/ERP venues, this means instantly that if SE shuts down mods, they'll lose another huge chunk of their playerbase. (imagine a little over 1 mill active players currently, likely less now due to being very late into the 7.1 patch cycle, but then imagine atleast 20% of the half of the playerbase leaving the game due to this decision, that's 100k players, 100k times 14 = 1.4 mill a month, you think SE will allow this to happen? SE is already struggling, let alone pulling this. Also, how are they gonna do it? introduce anti-cheat? it'll need to be Kernel level anti-cheat, which is invasive, which according to Yoshi is against Japanese laws, it can be done I guess since there are JP companies doing it. But as DRM for single player games only harms the legit consumers, anti-cheat only harm the legit players, you might drop in FPS due to the anti-cheat (yes it can happen) the network might be impacted as well due to the extra checks etc, while the modders will just keep modding because even "kernel level anti cheat" can be bypassed, look at CoD, look at Apex, look at Valorant, look at League.
Can someone explain to me why people are getting so terrified of this blacklist system if personal and payment info is not accessible through the plugin? Who cares if the plugin lets someone see your alts and retainers if you can blacklist their entire account and not have to deal with them? The system has already solved the in game stalking problem by removing the stalkers ability to interact with you, if they want to bother you again they have to pay money for a new account. Also just the threat of legal action will deter a majority of people from using the plugin to begin with.
People are getting upset because the social side of the FF community wants to be able to have a level of smoke and mirror incase they do something wrong so now if a creep is found they can't run and if your running from a creep you can't hide
@LadyVisilena what do you mean you can't hide from a creep? just blacklist them and they can't interact with you unless they fork over real money for a new account which you can blacklist too...this system pretty much just makes it so asshats can be communally blacklisted and ostracized.
stalkers dont always approach as troll or as their normal self, sometimes they make alts to try and befriend you as another fake persona on another account, just to sneak around doing stuff in your friend groups manipulating people without you knowing, them knowing your alts can feed into that, especially if you make a new character to get away from them and delete the old character they can still tell its you. am sure a majority of the outrage is people just wont wana be caught on their degen erp alts tho :)
Going after the plugin author isn't going to stop the exploit. The problem is that the game client makes account IDs easily accessible. That's a Square Enix client vulnerability.
That accesibility could only be achieved after the BL was updated, but it wasnt possible before.
That is true, but that doesn't give someone the right to exploit it through modding the game
@gildias2556 it's a client vulnerability that compromises player presence data. It's Square Enix's responsibility to address within its own software.
@jtbrown51 yes I said I agree they do need to fix that. But again it didn't give anyone the right to exploit it. I hope the take action against the guy that made this mod.
Okay, let me play devil's advocate for a bit because I'm trying to get an understanding here. What's so bad about someone knowing your account ID? As far as I know, this is not the same as account information (like username, password, credit card, etc), just an identifier of the account (this account belongs to Jane Doe).
This is weird to me as a software dev. It's their fault for exposing this information to the client. If they don't want information getting leaked... stop sending that data to the clients... The solution is on their end and the problem is something they caused with their really shitty design.
Exactly. This needs to be addressed as a software vulnerability that allows an attacker access to confidential player presence data. Treating it any other way is a blatant mischaracterization of the issue at hand. It must be treated as such by the software developer and apropriately mitigated within the code.
Having a hole in your code for potential hackers to exploit is something to be fixed, on the other hand, people who have nefarious intentions like the plugin developer need to be punished as well. Two things can be true at the same time
Yeah, it's a culture I really only see in gamedev where accountability is on the consumer. I agree that the bad actors should be punished, but in any other software engineering based industry, the company would also be liable for any resulting damages.
Well the idiot was trying to force people to join his Discord to opt out of being stalked so maybe they found out who he is through that method idk.
Exactly! They were dumb enough to use Discord. Doxxed themselves for life. Would be really funny if a name and address got leaked.. Oh the irony!
tldr: "we will sue a random guy who decided to exploit a vulnerability we introduced to our client. please stop talking about the vulnerability."
This is like putting a band aid over a 12 inches cut lmao. Imagine saying instead of "we'll sue the creator and please stop using it/talking about it" he'd have said "we will immediately look into resolving the issue of this privacy vulnerability and we will make sure something like this will never happen again in the future."... Yeah, imagine.
I screams of tone deaf. They mentioned nowhere about updating the black list or doing anything to protect our data. It reeks of PR jargon and I lost alot of faith i had left in Yoshi-P that he says "we'll sue the guy" And that's all they are saying
If you look at it from a company perspective this is an alarming issue, the fact that players can access this level of information means that there is a huge breach in their security which will make their investors raise some eyebrows, I think the lawsuit will be inevitable as long as they get enough information on the devs to at least drag the case out even if dismissed later on
This is such a nothingburger of a response. They aren't going to do jack shit to stop this. At least, this response doesn't actually confirm any actions will be taken at all.
Yes, they are. But there isnt much more they can say withouth further adressing the nature of this plugin's work, which is not on their best interests
@@fredy2041 What they should have said was something along the lines of: "We are working internally to remediate the exploit that this third party tool is exploiting"
But instead they only talked about going after the plugin author, which is both futile and completely pointless.
@ And that's not what they are already doing? Now they are talking of addressing legal pursuit, which is also a serious matter.
@@fredy2041 They have made no indication whatsoever that they have any intention of making any changes to their backend to remediate this vulnerability. This developer post was the perfect time and place to make that statement, and yet they instead only mentioned legal disputes (which won't solve anything) and attempting to remove the third party tool (which also won't solve anything). Additionally, they have known about this vulnerability for months and have made no attempt to remediate it thus far. So all things considered, saying that they are already working on this is just completely wrong.
@ as I stated before, they already adressed it way before on the oficial forums, and again. The problem lies before even the BL was upgraded. Thi has to be compleatly overlaued, and it will take time
Patch the exploit and go after the plugin maker, two birds one stone. The plugin dev also holds accountability. This is not all on Square.
It's like what you said you can't even explain it in a way where it isn't a creepy stalker addon.
bro doesnt understand JP lawyers, look at Nintendo's history or even rockstars history both of them can instantly get people in a flash
They could easily go after the guy but considering the time and resources it would take, I imagine they'll just adjust some code somewhere and move on and hope the warning will be enough to handle the rest.
SquareEnix should get some lawsuit tips from Nintendo.
Its not about the money for SE, its about sending a message.
I think they've done it as efficient as possible, but efficiency doesn't mean safety. Code could be so efficient if ppl wouldn't always try to misuse it for profit or to harm others...
Efficient sure, but definitely unsafe. I mean just make it peer to peer and they won't have to worry about server costs lol
God no peer to peer is ass lol
The two actions listed would be fine, useless but fine, if they also acknowledged they need to work on changing the fact they're broadcasting this information unprotected and they will change this when possible.
They're not accepting any culpability for the security of your information here, which makes you question the quality of the rest of their data security for your data.
damn can we talk about spongebob shutting it down at 8:12?
Eh, SE/Square won't do anything as they always haven't. Y'all remember the billboard with data mined items on it before release? nothing happened.
I actually remember that. LMAO. Was surprised nothing happened then.
wait, maybe that's the solution, combine the two, advertise the plugin on a billboard in a light that gets the fed's attention, the boomer news media will cover it and damage the PR of the game, and in a PR damage control move, SE will ACTUALLY do something about the blacklist and 3rd party tools (or do none of that and just sue the billboard under the "dont say anything bad about us" clause). bonus effect in that it will cause any illegal daters in the RP scene to immediately out themselves by complaining about the new billboard, the community will instantly know who to avoid in game or at venues
@@Diddz Lmfao. He just doesn't want to take action cause he knows once he does, he is burning down mods, which means 60% of the remaining player base. I would not be surprised he knows this and why he is trying to make the game easy for all so he can replay them and not fear the game dying out.
Ah yes ff14 the erp / rp experience billboard truly one of the best moments of drama
Besides changing how the game system works, I don't see how they can stop it. And, knowing how fast square work, that won't happen soon at all.
Yoshi-P Is NOT Taking Action Against FFXIV Stalker Plugin could also have been the title.
Yes, he is, chill out man child
@@fredy2041 lol
@@fredy2041he isn't yoshi-d rider
@ says the troll
@@fredy2041 says the anime pfp
This stalker plugin is dangerous, especially when used by people with negative intentions. They need to deal with this sh*t quickly cause it puts the privacy of players at risk. Yoshi-P needs to do better when it comes to these types of third party tools. Saying "hey, stop it" isn't gonna do sh*t as the maker can just repost that plugin. No one should have their privacy invaded by some rando with ill will toward fellow players.
The gshade drama was crazy, the mod author put malware in the old versions because gshade always forced you to update and people were annoyed of that and tried to stop the auto updates, gshade now is alot better and just notifies you when there is an update
The reason the blacklist uses account IDs is so that if you blacklist someone on one character, it blocks all their characters. The likely legal recourse is that the plugin dev accessed confidential user/SE data
its not confidential its code executed on your device unencrypted
With GIT hub they know their home IP address... EVERY commit (upload of a version) has both the user's IP ->ANDIF
I was about to say a quick court order to git hub and you will have the username and ip address of whoever uploaded the file and anyone else that may have also uploaded another version of it, and from there its not hard to track someone down even with a vpn in place the internet isn't this wild west people think it is and a few court orders is really all it takes
The issue was reported and they chose to release it anyway, DT in alot of ways has exposed how lazy they have gotten apparently there's an EU law that opens them to being sued(not sure if this one is true or not so dont quote me on it but still) if this happens how do you get to this point I never thought I'd see this game take such a huge nose dive.
The reason they don't wanna do anything is cause if they block all plugins and mods they cut the games population by at least half
I doubt any EU law applies since the information vulnerability is strictly related to in game information. Absolutely no personal information is being leaked.
What personal information is leaked? All leaks are things you could learn from just playing the game
Your account ID is not PII under GDPR...
*DT in alot of ways has exposed how lazy they have gotten apparently* is incredible how hyoerbolic and mature people are becoming "the have become lazy" seriously dude, search your priorities
Nah this is misinformation. Stop spreading lies.
If it shows player account IDs, it essentially has part of your login credentials. Account IDs and usernames from a cybersecurity standpoint are part of login authentication protocols used in multi factor authentication.
Something you know (Usernames, passwords, pins…etc)
Something you have (Token, Authenticator app, phone…etc)
Something you are (Fingerprint, Face ID, Iris scan…etc)
Essentially, someone out there can get access to at least one of three factors. Seems like a lawsuit might be in the works bc SE can’t enforce their own policies.
Account ID is not the same as Square Enix ID (the one you use to login). This whole thing is a nothingburger.
Unbelievable. Beyond ridiculous. There is a root cause that can be clearly identified and is fully within the devs' scope of action. The obvious answer is to fix the effin code. Make the logic to run server side exclusive. Even if your code is the worst imaginable code in the world you'll still be able to fix this within 2 or 3 weeks at most, and then you're done with the problem forever. How are they not already doing this? How are they not held to the industry standard of having to fix issues within their product that they are fully responsible for within an acceptable time frame?
I'm glad they're taking action but to be honest, I don't think this will stop. I think it's going to continues even if they do take down the uploader. Plus, this person is probably using a vpn.
SE's stance on third party programs is as meaningless as Russia's red lines.
Empty threats. They don't want to crack down on plugins because they'd lose half their subs. It's the state of the game right now. I wish they did but they still kind of somewhat like making money.
They should just fix the vulnerability, but will they? Ehh
I just need people to chill the fuck out. I really like some of my customization mods, things like better teeth and custom hair. I'd be bummed as fuck to lose them because other plugin creators churn out shit like this.
To me its sounds like bad coding made by a junior and poor testing.
The reason that Xeno has little faith in SE being able to pursue legal action against the individual is because the video game industry has a habit of not exercising their rights as a company and protecting IP. The company that does, Nintendo, constantly gets lambasted for exercising that right, even though they did set a precedent of going after an individual (we can disagree on the finer details).
That all being said, if the main issue is they made information available client-side, why can't they undo this? What could possibly be tracked, or not tracked, having it server-side? Is this more unironic spaghetti code in action or just incompetency on the current coding team? I do remember XIV has swapped out who is working on the game actively, but I'm not exactly sure if people in charge of this section of game development have changed hands.
suing doesn't solve the problem that the info is easily obtainable , another plugin similar will appear
The plugin is still available on a Russian hosting site
the biggest irony about all of this, is people only became "aware" of the problem because he made the plugin public, if the dude just copies this plugin, "deletes" it to avoid legality he can just make it but have it be a private plugin, also this isn't even a recent issue, this shit has been an issue 6 MONTHS and they're only responding now because they HAVE to
@ they didn't event mention a change to how information is communicated to the client which is the heart of the problem . Their answer is out of touch
As Cider Spider has said, "We should Expect Better!!"
its cheap and lazy to make it client sided, this also explains why blacklisting doesnt hide you from the blockee, only the blockee from you
When it comes to law suits vs criminal suits, the burden of proof is much lower. This basically means square would only need to prove it is more probable then not probable as oppose to criminal law which requires beyond reasonable doubt. So provided they can trace the upload to the author of the plug-in I think there’s reasonable chance of it sticking. This is of course all dependent on the factors of the case and how it is presented in court.
this was apparently hosted in Russia, good luck pursueing them in Russia, it's like when people host stuff in China and then people go "GO AFTER THEM!" they literally can't, you think countries like Russia and China even bother? they'll just ignore it and shrug.
If Bungie can find someone uploading illegal music and using false copyright strikes cause he was salty, you best believe with the resources and money they have SE can find the original uploader of the plugin. The dude is a legit creep for making this. If hes in NA, he should probably be forced to register on the SO list, he's an actual threat who has no issue letting random internet ppl have crazy access to others private info for the worst of reasons.
Anyone reposting it should recieve the same punishment
Legal action *could*, potentially, do a lot of good to prevent other people from making this sort of plugin.
Assuming they actually found the person and got a conviction, what this plugin does would basically result in *criminal* prosecution, not just civil - meaning potential prison time, not just a fine or whatnot.
That's not to say I don't think it's SE's fault, in the end, however. They definitely need to fix the issue on their end of things.
Heavy legal action that results in very, very bad consequences does tend to cut down on this sort of thing. It wouldn't stop it completely, but any new plugins would never be shared on the same scale as the current plugin was. There's *always* going to be similar pieces of software whenever a vulnerability like this is discovered, because humans are terrible. But it would become much more difficult for the average person to get ahold of.
yoshi p is gonna call saul
XIV shoulnd't allow any type of third party tools. Telling the players "pls no talk about it" is pretty stupid.
the amount of time Nintendo found their victims that created all of these emulators from around the world and sent their lawyer directly to them makes me think that yes, square enix too can search the people that made these mods and send their lawyers. but this is square enix so i don't know their capabilities, since i never once found a case that SE does similar to what nintendo do best.
If you need more evidence that YoshiP is completely out-of-touch with the community, this is it...
The hypocrisy of mod users being the judges on what's acceptable or not.
we are reaching the point where the devs needs to develop features thinking "a mod could see this or can do that"?
what if this wasn't the laziest way to implement the black list but the faster and easier on their systems? you also have the console players that have nothing to do with this and they are getting affected.
Who knows how many features are not created due to mods? or how long until SE creates one that will be so toxic for the community that actually impacts most players?
I mean that's how it is. Yes computer client can see a lot of things hell.
That doesn't excuse SE in the slightest though. That is kind of like saying "Do I need to have to lock my doors because people will walk in otherwise?"
I agree however that this implementation is (a bit) easier on the servers. After all now it's your game client deciding who to block or not.
That is no excuse however. I mean if you had that sort of mentality why do we use passwords to access services, why do we encrypt the data before they traverse the internet?
Why do we use 2FA when accessing various services?
Implementing systems where client has the authority instead of the server is just asking for trouble.
The reasons they have decided to do like that are multiple
- maybe the netcodeTM was already done like that (which would explain features like friendslist being awful in general too).
- maybe they were lazy
- or maybe they just wanted to save on server capacity
Also if anything mods have contributed to features being added. Just remember how people have gotten banned for using a QoL mod just to be added in the next update.
To sum it all up: Maybe an indie company which doesn't have as capable network devs could afford that. Not a giant corporation with 2! MMOs under its belt.
I don't think there's a justification to pursue legal action, since this is a plugin that only displays information that is being sent - by FF14 - to other players.
So the official response is basically, "Yes, we know. Your personal information has not been leaked. We're going to tell you we're going to eventually do something about this so you'll stop yelling. Please look forward to it."
As a PS5 player only am I in danger of it?
Sadly yes. Basically every game client (meaning player) gets account ids (numbers that represent the whole account!, not just character) of players and given some clever programming you can extract that number and keep note/connecting it with other characters/retainers for various purposes.
The only way to not be affected by it is to not play the game.
everyone is, but don't overreact, for 99% of the playerbase this does nothing, I'd even argue 100% for a very specific reason.
the current system makes anyone on your blacklist become invisible (basically don't exist as far as your game is concerned)
your game also automatically filter the blacklisted person, so they can't speak to you either.
this isn't a 2 way interaction though, so they can still see and maybe hear you (?)
so the only time you'd see someone you blacklisted is in instanced content (dungeons, trials, raids etc) and they appear as unknown 01, 02, 03 etc, when they say something it appears in chat as "someone on your blacklist said something and is blocked" or something to that effect, you can temporary "unblock" that person and see what they're typing, it'll go back to blocked after exiting the instance though.
you and me are already on that plugin, think within 3 days they had like 70-80% of the playerbase in their database, so it's likely you are in there as well, but as stated before, don't sweat it too much, this is just more an "this is yet another shit on the already piling amount of shit they're collecting" type of deal.
@@DarkDyllon finally someone with a level take on this for the vast majority of players this means nothing and this really wouldn't be major news if there was content to cover about the game but here we are
to everyone saying "SE won't do anything", well, they HAVE TO now. Japan has laws against cyberstalking and bullying. EU does as well, as does several American states.
SE has a lawful obligation to prevent harassment online, which would include blocking access to personally identifiable information such as account IDs that could be tied to a person's identity.
in the EU, the GDPR in this case won't do anything due to it being a privacy regulation, which this isn't gonna fit that bill due the GDPR requiring PII (personal identifiable information) to be available to people who shouldn't have it.
which in this case this isn't happening since Yoshi has already gone on record that payment info and that kind of information is not available with this plugin or this method or gathering information.
if you put your real name, payment method, address etc in your FF14 character, that's 1000% on you then, but for example, my online handle is "darkdyllon" with Dyllon being my irl name, I can't go to TH-cam, Twitch, SE and any other place I used this alias and go "BUT IT'S PII!" because I chose to make it that name.
But also, the current blacklist makes it so that YOU can't see the 1 stalking, so effectively they could argue that the stalking issue of over, because you don't know if you're being stalked or not.
Not defending SE here, since the implementation of the current system is abysmal and they didn't do any basic security basics when making this and it's obvious and Yoshi's response is also piss poor, as plenty of others have said on both JP and english forums, this didn't address any of the actual concerns people have.
But in reality, since you can't see said person, that person can't interact with you to your knowledge (a kinda "if I close my eyes, you don't exist" type of deal)
even in instances, they can't communicate with you, they could emote on you I guess, but this is required since you can't expect everyone else to just bow down and make it impossible for said person to be unable to any content.
what if you had a bad day in an ultimate PF (can happen) and you get kicked and black listed by the 7 other members, then you wouldn't be able to encounter them at all anymore, meaning the already bad queue times just become worse. (Although, I do agree that it should be 2 ways, so outside of instances, both can't see or hear each other, but the current version is passable at best)
Doesn't square enix have bug bounties so people can chase money by finding these and reporting them?
this is if anything else a major L for SE, they present us with a nothing burger instead of fixing the actual problem... DT has showed us that SE is getting lazy in an excessive amount
Accountability left the chat
Surely the first thing they should do is patch the game so this data can’t be accessed with addons?
I’m not sure at this point it’s that they don’t care about addons - it’s probably more like they can’t stop them without rewriting the client and how it interfaces with the server. And it feels like they won’t ever do this unless something severe happens which forces them to.
You underestimate how much info they have on all of us active players who've paid for the game. Square-Enix's execs are morons who need to reinvest more of the funds gained from 14 into 14, but something like this stalker prug-in that really can't be called by any other name needs to be shut down asap before it gets out to mainstream media sources.
"Final Fantasy XIV Plug-In Allows You to be Stalked (no matter what character you're on)" - is really not something that they'd want investors hearing about. Big companies like Square don't usually threaten legal action as a bluff. Especially since they have the Game Director's Account posting about it. Look at the shit Nintendo's pulled.
The US legal system is completely skewed towards the rich, Japan's legal system is completely skewed towards corpos. Hell, a Japanese dentist (who fucked up the procedure) once sued a guy who left him a bad review (for screwing up the procedure). The dentist won...
This is probably the one and only time I'll be happy about the fucked up nature of both countries' legal systems since it means that that bastard creator is fucked.
Can't they just make some sort of coding change to the game to break the plug-in the way World of Warcraft does when they don't want a plug-in to function in their game anymore?
Can someone explain why using this 3 rd party tools? I see peoples blaming SE, but for me the problem is on the tools
Because third party tools will exist regardless, and SE has known about them nearly since their inception. This plugin existing was possible because of readily available client data and the obvious solution, not making formerly-private account information for all characters plainly visible to all clients, was not taken. It may not necessarily be their fault, but they could have reasonably prevented it and did not, and that's not a good look for the entity that's supposed to be protecting its users' data, at the very least.
Obviously the person that developed this plugin has done an immensely shitty thing, because most people interested in its functions are not tech literate enough to figure out how to look at those things without it, but the creator did not technically give them access to anything their client was not allowed to know. That was a massive oversight in and of itself.
I only liked "tools" used for your own "benefit" not to ruin things for others.
For example, dps meter, if you want to become better, it's very useful to see how you either keep up with other classes, or can do better with a class.
It can also be fun for friends trying to compete for "shits and giggles" and see who does the best dps
But moment it intrudes on others, fck that shit
If it turns out that the information attained also includes more information such as personal identifiable information or CC information via account id, then this will not be a simple case of cease and decist.
SE needs a downfall of xiv tbh. They need near total failure in order to force them to change, because literally nothing else will. They're so fucking scared of change and risk that they've essentially put the game into a borderline maintenance mode with how formulaic and lazy things have gotten. Tragic as all fuck because ive loved this game for years
Bungie has sued hackers for millions of dollars. There's a way to find the author and pursued legal action, I can totally see them do it
whoever was in charge of the plugin, they need to take a page from nintendo and give the author the gary bowser treatment, jailtime PLUS millions in damages that also will be garnished from wages
it's just a small post telling people "it does not compromise personal SE account data" - because technically, it doesn't, while they are able to gather data in-game that is still technically public data as its sent to the client - and they basically just verified it's intended to be public by not doing anything about the actual underlying issue lol
Dude needs to make a better game
"Please don't do that" WTF is that answer! So fking lame, the mods have gotten out of hand, its time for some sort of anti-cheat, the amount of plugins for raids is crazy too, like you dont even had to think or care for the mechanics the plugis do it all for you even your rotation. Why raiders ask for harder content when they dont even play it how is ment to be played?
I finished the raid like 5 months ago and quit, didnt came back for fru bc im not that good or maybe i just dont have the plugins to be good XD
Man i cant wait for the moblie version where is zero shit like this!
this comment shows how ignorant you are.
I use plugins but I can function without them, even in ultimate raids, it might suck, but i'll manage.
But an anti-cheat is basically the same as DRM for single player games, they only harm or hinder the legit users, rarely the offenders.
Also, anti-cheat is notoriously easy to bypass without getting detected, look at CoD and it's kernel level anti-cheat, it's 1 of the 1st things that ALWAYS boot before the rest of your PC boots, the same for Easy Anti-Cheat that is in Apex Legends, the same with Valorant/League's anti-cheat, also both kernel level, yet all 4 games have cheaters.
anti cheats are never the answer
@DarkDyllon Yeah I'm ignorant, especially on that topic because I don't use that shit. I can't take your reply seriously since you just said you're a plugin user, so i see why my comment hurt you. I'm fine with an invasive and heavy anti-cheat, the game isn't that hard to run on any PC, and with out act we dont need to have a dps focus raids so we can have fights like midas back in the hs days with fun and unique mechanics
Also, yeah, everyone is ignorant, i haven't met a single person who knows everything in this world.
most players don't use mods sure you see it more at the top end of the game but even then its a small percentage I'm the only one in my group that uses any and I just use one to hit my crafting macros for me which saves me from having to press a button every min, but you can see the amount of times these mods have been used on the website and its a small fraction of the total players the game has, and the most common ones are glamour related like adding hats to viera not really the pve or raiding ones that I don't use but still looked at recently
@@Jp96115 everyone is ignorant to something yes, but if you're ignorant on the issue, then ask for clarification instead of going for the nuclear option.
But also, Yoshi has already gone on record that they're never going back to HW fight design, so this is a pipe dream, but also " I can't take your reply seriously since you just said you're a plugin user, so i see why my comment hurt you"
for starters, your comment doesn't hurt me, don't see why it would honestly, but disregarding an opinion because I use a plugin is also as stupid as it gets.
sure I got a stake in this and don't want to lose plugins, since it makes the game a lot better to play, imagine being able to see when some nodes for gathering are up from ingame instead of needing to go through multiple windows to verify for each seperate 1.
They can make fun and unique mechanics without it, but if you think that anti-cheat will stop ACT, you're also, very ignorant on this topic.
anti-cheat only harms the regular user as I stated already, EVERY anti-cheat can be bypassed, even the most "evasive" as you stated, also how stupid must you be to be ok with a company opening a massive backdoor to your PC, it definitely didn't happen already that an kernel level anti-cheat got taken over and was used as a backdoor into people's computers, but you do you, I rather avoid that, unfortunately I can't with some games.
If SE takes it as seriously as Nintendo, you can be very sure the guy will be like overcooked. Btw, correction about the feedback send back on DT's release. The response was "we adressed the issue and we are looking into it" and up to this day it was not fixed. No that "we don't care, there are no problems with the BL". It was neither ignored nor said that they aren't doing anything
you back to tell people they don't play xiv?
@@NotGuy64 harassment? why are that triggered?
SE doesn't have nearly the amount that nintendo has in its coffers. 0 chance any legit legal action past a cease and desist on the github repo which I think was already done
@ I'm would be so sure. Jp companies have a reputations when pursuing legal actions. Nintendo is just more known publicly of what they have did
I have a feeling that the cloud of darkness party I joined and got kicked 30 seconds later was the leader using the stalker tool. The party description was "at least 10 clears no mistakes" or something like that.
So the reason I believe I was kicked was because I have my FF Logs set to private. I dont want to debate why I will always keep it that way but I think it is 100% valid.
Me personally, I have to guestimate that my clears of that fight are probably between 50 - 80. Point is, I am competent, but kicked because I choose not to be judged.
That's just not right.
it's up to you, but they look your character up on FFlogs (nothing about the "stalker" plugin, you literally just punch your ingame username visible to anyone into FFlogs, then you see everyone with that name and their world, just picks your character (or don't find your character) and kick you.
those parties are very simple "prove you got 10 clears or get kicked" it's that simple.
You are grasping at straws here, your reasoning for privating your account is your reasons and you're well within your rights to do so, but don't be surprised when people look you up, see you don't got any logs (or are privated) and just kick you, it's literally that simple.
To be fair, you can probably report them for it. While it might come to 'differences in playstyle,' you are tasking the team into looking into how this person would or would not have known to remove you. Especially if they didn't speak to you, asking you to prove your clears (screenshot clear items, achievement, whatever else is relevant to the fight). A lot of people are just complacent about pushing back on what are usually obvious third party tool use.
@@aSmolGoth it is very obvious they're using FFlogs to filter people, but they can go "i've seen this person before and made a ton of mistakes" or something like that, the GM will literally just go /shrug and move on.
it's the same that someone got mad that you needed 730 ilvl to join a party, this isn't ToS breaking, yes this is technically ToS breaking, but there's 0 way to prove it, also that FFlogs is a public website, I can use it to make my judgement, regardless if SE likes it or not, but they also can't prove that I used it, and that's the deciding factor here, there's no proof that I did in fact use a 3rd party website to make my judgement.
i mean it could have also been that they recognized your name & decided that they didn't want you in their raid group. I've done it before, where i recognized someone that I didn't want to play with (usually they're toxic or something) & I just decide I'm not having it. You can't blame it all on plugins. If you have 50 - 80 clears of the fight there's bound to be someone out there that doesn't want to play with you.
You're not owed a spot and no one needs a plugin to check if your logs are hidden.
You want people to recognize your "competence", but don't want to provide necessary data because you don't want to be judged, that's just delusional.
This, to me, reads as them realising they facked up by exposing important info to the client, but they don't want to admit it.
Both the problem and the solution are entirely on *their end*
There is not crime here lol the only reason that Japanese people say that shit is due to laws in Japan, which are not applicable to most other countries - there is absolutely no legal basis to criminally pursue someone for making a mod that has publicly available information in the code - the code is running on your system you're intercepting information on your own device - it is 100% purely SE's fault for not maintaining the confidentiality of the information and there is no country outside of Japan that would give a fuck about this. literally all they need to do is encrypt the ID and they didn't.
People have this weird obsession with the law that like if something bad happens that oh just take this person to jail or sue them for some perceived damage. in the real world you have to prove criminality and harm which there is no way to do in this case. the people with the strongest case are people who are victims of stalking but the author can just create a banner in the mod like "This software is for statistical usage only and it is against usage policy to track individuals for the purpose of identifying them or their interactions with others or enumeration of their characters in any way" the internet might as well be the wild west even in domestic cases add to that international precedents and forget it the threat is just that a threat that frankly only has teeth in Japan if even there.
This is an even more useless Cease & Desist. C&Ds are mainly used as an intimidation tactic, because the party issuing the C&D is unable to actually file a lawsuit. What Yoshi P did is even weaker than that, because not only can square not do anything about the addon, they likely cannot even find or touch the people involved. On top of that, square is likely going to get blasted by the EU with a lawsuit over their inept handling of PII due to this change.
Bungie has had success suing and winning cases against hack mods so it's not completely impossible
And that is how SE will shut down all mods and be done with it
if you think SE will shut down mods, you're delusional.
SE is already sweating that they're on the brink of reaching end of SHB levels of players, atleast half of the playerbase uses mods, and you know that a good chunk of those are also relying heavily on mods for RP/ERP venues, this means instantly that if SE shuts down mods, they'll lose another huge chunk of their playerbase. (imagine a little over 1 mill active players currently, likely less now due to being very late into the 7.1 patch cycle, but then imagine atleast 20% of the half of the playerbase leaving the game due to this decision, that's 100k players, 100k times 14 = 1.4 mill a month, you think SE will allow this to happen? SE is already struggling, let alone pulling this.
Also, how are they gonna do it? introduce anti-cheat? it'll need to be Kernel level anti-cheat, which is invasive, which according to Yoshi is against Japanese laws, it can be done I guess since there are JP companies doing it.
But as DRM for single player games only harms the legit consumers, anti-cheat only harm the legit players, you might drop in FPS due to the anti-cheat (yes it can happen)
the network might be impacted as well due to the extra checks etc, while the modders will just keep modding because even "kernel level anti cheat" can be bypassed, look at CoD, look at Apex, look at Valorant, look at League.
@DarkDyllon We'll see
bro got into once incident with a dude about harassment and all of a sudden he is the guru about the law lol
Can someone explain to me why people are getting so terrified of this blacklist system if personal and payment info is not accessible through the plugin?
Who cares if the plugin lets someone see your alts and retainers if you can blacklist their entire account and not have to deal with them?
The system has already solved the in game stalking problem by removing the stalkers ability to interact with you, if they want to bother you again they have to pay money for a new account.
Also just the threat of legal action will deter a majority of people from using the plugin to begin with.
People are getting upset because the social side of the FF community wants to be able to have a level of smoke and mirror incase they do something wrong so now if a creep is found they can't run and if your running from a creep you can't hide
@LadyVisilena what do you mean you can't hide from a creep? just blacklist them and they can't interact with you unless they fork over real money for a new account which you can blacklist too...this system pretty much just makes it so asshats can be communally blacklisted and ostracized.
stalkers dont always approach as troll or as their normal self, sometimes they make alts to try and befriend you as another fake persona on another account, just to sneak around doing stuff in your friend groups manipulating people without you knowing, them knowing your alts can feed into that, especially if you make a new character to get away from them and delete the old character they can still tell its you. am sure a majority of the outrage is people just wont wana be caught on their degen erp alts tho :)
@ This right here alot of people pretent to be saints and have a ult that dances in quicksands
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