The developer of a Final Fantasy 14 mod has been criticised for purposefully adding potentially harmful malware to the code that forces a computer shutdown.
All third-party tools are against the Terms of Service for the MMORPG – in fact, just last week director and producer Naoki Yoshida stated he was “extremely disappointed” in the use of mods.
GShade, however, is a popular mod to alter the aesthetics of the game without affecting gameplay.
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Leaked Discord messages from GShade developer Marot Satil reveal that malware was deliberately put into the mod code that could force a computer shutdown if GShade files were accessed by a third-party application, reports Gamerant (via TheGamer).
The malware was seemingly included to teach a lesson about mod use. “This was meant to be a lesson to you specifically about taking this approach to the problem; anything could have been in the payload and you’d have been responsible for distributing it to people and triggering it,” reads the direct message.
Players have been in uproar following the news. Marot Satil has reportedly been banned from a popular Final Fantasy 14 Discord and a statement on the game’s subreddit has specifically called out GShade.
“Unfortunately, after verifying the changes the developer of GShade has made to their programme, we will no longer endorse the tool as a community resource, and its links have been removed from our server,” reads the statement.
An investigation from Github has led to GShade being removed from the hosting service.
So the Gshade stuff has a new development:
Gshade is fucking dead. The Github is GONE, following a github investigation.Which means that all current, unmodified installs of Gshade are bricked. pic.twitter.com/hZs5cCUOsq
— Ehud Kurzweil (@KabscOrner) February 7, 2023
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While Yoshida’s comments last week were specifically aimed at those seeking a World First clear of new content, this GShade controversy is a further reason why third-party tools shouldn’t be used with the game – you never know what malware could be included.
An official visual upgrade of Final Fantasy 14 is due in patch 7.0. Test shots were shown in a livestream last February.
