Yoshi-P Threatens Legal Action Over 'Stalking' Mod in Final Fantasy 14

In early 2025, a mod for Final Fantasy 14 named "Playerscope" raised significant privacy concerns due to its ability to scrape hidden player data. This mod could access details such as character information, retainer data, 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 "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 having their data collected, posing a major privacy risk. The community expressed strong concerns, with one Reddit user stating, "the purpose is obvious, to stalk people."

The mod gained popularity after being discovered on Github, but was subsequently removed due to terms of service violations. Although it was mirrored on Gittea and Gitflic, IGN confirmed that the repository no longer exists on these platforms. However, the mod might still be circulating in private communities.

Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida. Photo by Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images.

Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida, the producer and director of Final Fantasy 14, issued a statement on the game's official forum addressing the issue of third-party mods, specifically referencing Playerscope. He confirmed the existence of tools that access character information not visible during normal gameplay and noted that these tools display parts of a player's internal account ID, which could be used to correlate information across different characters on the same service account.

Yoshida outlined the following options being considered by the development and operations teams:

• Requesting the removal and deletion of the tool.
• Pursuing legal action.

He reassured players that personal information such as addresses and payment details registered on Square Enix accounts cannot be accessed by these tools. Yoshida emphasized the importance of maintaining a safe environment for players and urged them to refrain from using or sharing information about third-party tools. He also highlighted that the use of such tools violates the Final Fantasy 14 User Agreement and could compromise player safety.

While third-party 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 such mods.

The Final Fantasy 14 community has responded critically 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 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, stating, "Kind of a disappointing statement that really fails to acknowledge the root cause of the problem."

The author of Playerscope has not yet responded to these developments.