Final Fantasy 14 Director Yoshi-P Threatens Legal Action Against 'Stalking' Mod

In early 2025, a mod for Final Fantasy 14 named "Playerscope" sparked widespread concern over privacy violations. This mod was reported to scrape hidden player data, including character information, retainer details, and any alternate characters linked to a Square Enix account. Playerscope allowed users to track specific player data of anyone in their vicinity, sending this information to a centralized database managed by the mod's author. This data collection occurred regardless of whether the user was directly observing a player or simply near others in the game.

The mod exploited the "Content ID" and "Account ID" systems introduced with the Dawntrail expansion, enabling the tracking of players across different characters. The only way to opt out of this data scraping was to join a private Discord channel associated with Playerscope. This situation raised significant privacy concerns within the community, with one player on Reddit stating, "the purpose is obvious, to stalk people."

The mod gained popularity after its code was found on GitHub, leading to its removal due to terms of service violations. Although it was mirrored on other platforms like Gittea and Gitflic, IGN confirmed that the repositories no longer exist on these sites. However, the mod might still be circulating in private communities.

"We have confirmed that there exist third-party tools that are being used to check Final Fantasy 14 character information that is not displayed during normal gameplay. The tool is being used to display a segment of an Final Fantasy 14 character's internal account ID, which is then used in an attempt to further correlate information on other characters on the same Final Fantasy 14 service account.

"The Development and Operations teams are aware of the situation and the concerns being raised by the community and are discussing the following options:

• Requesting that the tool in question be removed and deleted.
• Pursuing legal action."

Yoshida emphasized that while personal information such as addresses and payment details cannot be accessed by these tools, the use of third-party tools violates the Final Fantasy 14 User Agreement and threatens player safety. He urged players to refrain from using and sharing information about these tools.

Despite the prohibition of third-party tools, tools like Advanced Combat Tracker are commonly used by the raiding community and referenced on platforms like FFlogs. Yoshida's threat of legal action marks a significant escalation in the game's stance against such mods.

The Final Fantasy 14 community has reacted strongly to Yoshida's statement. Some players criticized the lack of focus on fixing the game's vulnerabilities that allowed the mod to function, with one user commenting, "fixing the game to break the mod isn’t on the list of options they’re considering I see." Another suggested that the game should prevent the exposure of sensitive information on the client side, while a third expressed disappointment over the statement's failure to address the root cause of the issue.

The author of Playerscope has yet to respond to the controversy.