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

In early 2025, a Final Fantasy 14 mod named "Playerscope" sparked widespread "stalking" fears due to its ability to scrape hidden player data, including character information, retainer details, and any alternate characters linked to a Square Enix account. This mod allows users to track specific player data of anyone nearby, sending the information to a centralized database managed by the mod's author. This tracking occurs regardless of whether the user is actively looking at a specific player or just in the vicinity of other players, capturing data that is typically not accessible through in-game tools.

Playerscope exploits the "Content ID" and "Account ID" systems, introduced in the Dawntrail expansion, to track players across multiple characters. This manipulation enables users to blacklist others across their service account and different characters. The only way to opt out of this data scraping is by joining a private Discord channel set up by the mod's author. This means that every Final Fantasy 14 player not in the Discord channel is potentially having their data collected, raising significant privacy concerns. The community has been vocal about these issues, with one commenter on Reddit stating, "the purpose is obvious, to stalk people."

The mod gained popularity after its code was discovered on Github, leading to its removal due to terms of service violations. Although it was mirrored on alternative platforms like Gittea and Gitflic, IGN confirmed that the Playerscope repository no longer exists on these sites. However, it may still be circulating within 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 a 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.

"Apart from character information that can be checked in-game and on the Lodestone, we have received concerns that personal information registered on a user’s Square Enix account, such as address and payment information, could also be exposed with this tool. Please rest assured that it is not possible to access this information using these third-party tools.

"We strive to offer and maintain a safe environment for our players, which is why we ask everyone to refrain from using third-party tools. We also ask that players do not share information about third-party tools such as details about their installation methods, or take any other actions to assist in their dissemination.

"The use of third-party tools is prohibited by the Final Fantasy 14 User Agreement and their usage could threaten the safety of players. We will continue to take a firm stance against their usage."

While third-party tools like Advanced Combat Tracker are commonly used by the game's raiding community and cross-referenced on websites 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. One user commented, "fixing the game to break the mod isn’t on the list of options they’re considering I see." Another player suggested, "or you could just see how not to expose the information on [the player’s] client side. Of course, this means extra work which they did not plan for, but is Final Fantasy 14 really on such a tight schedule and budget they can't deal with these things properly?" A third person remarked, "Kind of a disappointing statement that really fails to acknowledge the root cause of the problem."

The author of Playerscope has yet to respond to these developments.