Regarding the FFXIV change for Steam users

[ArcModerator]

Hello,

so Square Enix has announced, that in order “to align closely with Steam policies” they will “implement a restricted login check process for Steam service account users”.

This change is horrible and there are already petitions on the official forums going against this, but something else that came to my mind is, that if Square Enix actually does this, this might eventually affect Miqobot as well, namely because Valve might eventually force SE to use their anti-cheat engine for FFXIV, which if I’m not mistaken, reportedly already banned some Miqobot user’s Steam accounts – so Steam players might not be able to use Miqobot anymore.

My question now is: Is the Miqo team already considering this possibility and making up ideas on how to counter it? I really do not want to have to stop using Miqobot one day, so for me this is really worrying.

[LyfoxParticipant]

Its a rhetorical question. If SE ever does that then parsers like ACT and Cactbot will fall down too. Im much more worried about them than Miqo since they dont offer paid services and have no motivation to counter any anticheat engines. I cant imagine my endgame without parsers anymore. Fflogs competition is so much fun and id really hate to see it disappear.

[DAL41123Participant]

Ive have a Steam version of the game and occasionally launch through steam. I usually dont mainly because i often like to run multiple steam games and steam doesnt like that usually. Steam is a little forgiving with some of the games in my library but the only games i have ever seen use the VAC anti-cheat engine are Valve games and many of the free to play online games. Games such as counterstrike, Dota, Dota2 for example. From what i can tell, Valve does not require publishers to use their anti cheat service for online games. I personally have a LOT of online games in my library and have used multiple hacks and cheat tools and have never been VAC banned in the life of my account. for the record i have had steam for a little over 12 years. Now that is not to say that square enix may elect to use the VAC system though it would be very doubtful since the integration would require significant re-coding of both their serverside and client side software. Given that there are still weaknesses present from FF14 1.0 and issues that exist since day one (gil sellers and adverts) i HIGHLY doubt SE would implement the VAC system. Here is my reasoning for this:

1. in the launcher you can see a posted report of the number of allegedly permanently banned and suspended account.
2. Gilsellers have existed for the game since launch and still frequent in numbers.

Now from that information there are a number of things you can speculate from this. Square enix is lying and fabricating the number of accounts banned. Square enix has truly banned those accounts and has profited from the sale of those licenses. Or square enix actively supports and profits from gilseller activities and behaves in a plausible deniability fashion.

In all of those situations it would detrimental to profits for square enix to adopt a new anti cheat system. If you have played this game for any reasonable amount of time you would know that profits come WAY before anything to do with the game.
here are a handful of systems SE has implemented to increase profits to the ire of players.
Mogstation services.
Weekly reward restrictions
Significantly reduced GM staff.
Offer limited edition in game items for purchase indefinitely.

TL;DR: This change will largely only affect your steam playtime count, and help integrate in game item purchases though steam store.

[Carl ArbogastParticipant]

This has nothing to do with VAC at all.

VAC is a completely different thing, and as a developer you have to implement it into your game, Valve is not forcing it on developers at all, it’s just one of their services, like achievements, etc.

SE is one of the greediest and laziest dev out there, they will never implement something like VAC, it goes so much against their interests, they hate third party middleware, they hate spending money on them, they hate spending time on implementing them, etc.

So, this all thing, has nothing to do with VAC, they’re just ensuring you can’t use the Steam XIV installation to be launched outside of Steam. This really changes nothing for ACT, Miqobot, etc.

Funny thing is that you can own the game on Steam, but logging in through it with a regular SE XIV PC account, which is the opposite of what they’re trying to prevent.

[ArcModerator]

Phew, now with what you’ve said, my worries have lifted a bit.

Funny thing is that you can own the game on Steam, but logging in through it with a regular SE XIV PC account, which is the opposite of what they’re trying to prevent.

Well, that’s what I was doing for years now. The only sad thing is, that when this change is done, I’ll propably not be able to use custom launchers anymore, if I understood it correctly.

[Author]

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