At the end of last week, the Final Fantasy 14 community received quite the upset, though some would say we’re more than used to it at this point. This time, the conflict lies with the sudden, and seemingly final, shutdown of one of its most beloved and popular mods: Mare Synchronos. While modding is against the terms of service, it’s an open secret that plenty of very popular mods exist to make the game more accessible, enjoyable, and rewarding.
For the uninitiated, Mare Synchronos was a game-changer. Cosmetic mods – custom hairstyles, outfits, and other visual tweaks – have long been a crucial part of the FF14 experience for those who play on PC. To begin with, they were, by default, a private affair. The mods were client-side, meaning only the player who installed them could see the changes. Mare Synchronos broke that barrier, creating a peer-to-peer system that allowed players to see each other’s modded appearances, no matter what settings you use personally. It was a tool that brought the game’s creative and role-playing communities to life. Its popularity was immense, with the mod’s Discord server boasting over 200,000 users and the announcement of its takedown getting thousands of comments within hours.
The takedown notice didn’t explicitly name a party, but speculation within the community points to Square Enix. After all, it’s the entity that has the most pull and say in the matter. For years, the unofficial policy has been a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach. Director and producer Naoki Yoshida has been famously lenient, publicly acknowledging the existence of mods while stating that the company won’t take action unless a player is being too public or using a mod to gain an unfair advantage.
This stance has led to the growth of a massive and largely unbothered modding community, where players use everything from simple UI tweaks to combat parsers. SE has historically intervened when cheaters use mods to get an edge in world-first races, but for the most part, the community has thrived in this grey area.
While I’ve let my current sub lapse (I’m waiting for the final patch before the next expansion to catch up all at once; I’m not a raider), I use mods extensively when I do play. I utilise tweaks that reduce how many hotkeys I need in combat, I love being able to customise which of my jobs use which mounts, and having in-game fishing timers and aids is inarguably better than having to alt-tab to some online guide constantly. Without these time-savers and streamliners, the tasks I’ve come to enjoy become arduous and boring.
I didn’t use Mare Synchronos; I’m not a very social player, and I’ve heard horror stories about the ‘kind of things people turn their characters into’, so it never appealed to me. However, the removal of Mare Synchronos is a blow to the social fabric of the game, particularly for the roleplaying and glamour communities, and this does alarm me. It effectively ends a key way for players to express themselves and share their creativity with others, and begs the question: could more mods be on the firing line?
Glamourer allows players to kit out their characters in Mogstation-exclusive gear for free, Artisan basically automates crafting recipes, and Simple Tweaks turns auction undercutting into a no-brainer. These are all things I can see being a bit of a turn-off for SE, as it’s potentially losing out on earning extra money from fans, as they can simply mod outfits onto their characters rather than pay for them.
For players who have invested countless hours and resources into their modded experience, the thought of losing it all is a chilling one. Will other essential mods like Penumbra and Glamourer be next? If Square Enix or some other entity is now targeting mods for cosmetic and social reasons, it’s a fundamental shift in their stance. It signals a move away from the tacit acceptance that has allowed the community to flourish, and toward a more aggressive and potentially game-breaking enforcement of the rules.
For many, the decision to subscribe to FF14 is tied to the ability to customise their experience. Without mods, the game becomes functionally unplayable for those who rely on them to fix quality-of-life issues, or simply to make their characters look the way they want, especially for players who don’t play for story or raids, but for social interactions and roleplaying. Mods have become crucial parts of this experience. Without them, why play?
My fear is that this isn’t just a one-off event, but a sign of things to come, and that the freedom and creativity that has defined a massive part of the FF14 player base is now in jeopardy. FF14 is by no means a perfect game, but having mods to tweak the things that could be improved went a long way to making it worth playing for so long.
Final Fantasy 14
- Released
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August 27, 2013
- ESRB
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T for Teen – Language, Mild Blood, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence
- Engine
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Originally the Crystal Tools engine, but currently it’s a custom engine using parts of the Luminous Engine.
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op, Online Multiplayer
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