Summary
During today’s live letter,Final Fantasy 14director Naoki Yoshida addressed the recent controversy surrounding the PlayerScope “stalking” plugin and confirmed the issue would be addressed in Patch 7.2.
As you’d expect from one of the biggest online games of all time,Final Fantasy 14 is no stranger to big controversies and exploits, but one of its latest issues has gotten so bad that Square Enix has even had to step in. I am, of course, talking about the PlayerScope plugin,which used blacklist changes brought by Dawntrail to essentially allow specific player data to be freely accessed.
How it works is a little bit complicated (and more eloquently put by the news team’s Final Fantasy 14 star, Joshua Robertson), but PlayerScope uses a unique account ID system to collect player info and put it on a server that can be accessed with the plugin. It’s basically data collection, andYoshi-P even had to release a statement about it that suggested legal action from Square Enix.
Final Fantasy 14 Director Doesn’t Want Fans To Worry About Playerscope
While Final Fantasy 14 directorNaoki Yoshida has already said his piece on PlayerScopethrough a post on The Lodestone,he also decided to address it directly during today’s live letter.As translated by members of the Final Fantasy 14 Discord, Yoshida said he wanted to take the chance to talk about the situation and explained that “no personal information was accessed” beyond account IDs.
Yoshida also confirmed that, while he couldn’t say how far Square Enix is going with the plugin,steps are going to be taken in Patch 7.2 to address the issue. Beyond that, Yoshi-P also said that he was “very disappointed” that this kind of tool even exists in Final Fantasy 14, but that the blacklist system in place will be improved upon in the game’s future.
I might have given the impression that you shouldn’t care if you weren’t aware of this, but let me rephrase, I don’t want you to worry, we’re taking steps. - Naoki Yoshida
The fact that Yoshi-P has now made two statements on the issues with PlayerScope should make it clear how big a deal it is to both Square Enix and the developers. While the director purposefully didn’t say how far things are going to be taken, his languagedoes suggest that the legal action being talked about recently could actually go ahead.
