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

In early 2025, a Final Fantasy 14 mod named "Playerscope" sparked significant privacy concerns due to its ability to scrape hidden player data. This mod could access details such as character information, retainer information, and any alternate characters linked to a Square Enix account. Playerscope allowed users to track specific player data of anyone nearby, sending this information to a centralized database managed by the mod's author. This tracking included sensitive data like "Content ID" and "Account ID," which could be used to monitor players across different characters, exploiting the Content ID system introduced in the Dawntrail expansion.

To avoid having their data scraped, players needed to join a private Discord channel for Playerscope and opt out. This meant that any Final Fantasy 14 player not in the channel was potentially at risk of having their data collected, raising serious privacy issues. The community's reaction was swift and vocal, with one Reddit user stating, "the purpose is obvious, to stalk people."

The mod gained widespread attention after its source 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 repository no longer exists on these sites. However, the mod might still be circulating in private communities.

Final Fantasy 14's producer and director, Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida, addressed the issue on the game's official forum. He confirmed the existence of third-party tools like Playerscope that access hidden character information and use it to correlate data across different characters on the same service account. Yoshida emphasized that personal information such as addresses and payment details cannot be accessed by these tools. He outlined the development and operations teams' plans, which include requesting the tool's removal and considering legal action.

Yoshida stressed the importance of maintaining a safe environment for players and urged them to refrain from using or sharing information about third-party tools. He reminded the community that such tools violate the Final Fantasy 14 User Agreement and could compromise player safety.

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

The Final Fantasy 14 community's response to Yoshida's statement was critical. One player remarked, "fixing the game to break the mod isn’t on the list of options they’re considering I see." Another 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 user expressed disappointment, noting that the statement "really fails to acknowledge the root cause of the problem."

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