For those who follow me for non-FFXIV reasons, I bring a crumb of internet drama to your door:
As with a lot of MMOs, roleplaying is a big thing. A BIG thing. Another big thing is the modding scene, so you can get your character looking just how you like. Squeenix does not best love mods, but it's broadly a don't-ask-don't-tell situation: as long as your mods don't give you an unfair advantage and you don't rub them in anyone's face, they'll look the other way
Guess what's the explicit direct polar opposite of not rubbing it in anyone's face
Buying four entire billboards in a major US city about it
A roleplay group bought out multiple billboards to advertise an event, and used both a modded screenshot (edit: that apparently uses a datamined unreleased outfit holy shit) and the official game logo on it
This Has Gone Well For Them and last I heard people had been banned temporarily over it pending more severe action, the modding scene is having very real fears that Squeenix will crack down on mod use over it, and apparently the organizers are pitching a hissy on their discord
For those who are curious about what happened in the end (because the Billboard Incident went down in mid-2022, and because there's tons of wild speculation and misinformation about this, even from sites that cite their sources):
Update, July 6: FF14 nightclub Rain, has removed its billboards advertising an upcoming event following attacks from a number of trolls, in
In a nutshell:
Squenix did not take legal action or ban anybody because of this issue. A few clickbait articles came out with titles like "Square Enix Cracks Down on Billboard Advertisers!", but the actual contents of those articles were that Squenix hadn't responded yet. If there were any consequences, it didn't happen publicly.
According to one of the club owners, the billboards cost $160 per day at most, and they were up for less than 2 days. Rain voluntarily took the billboards down after the community backlash.
Also according to the club owners, the nightclub does ERP, but the party itself was SFW and held in a public place.
Yes, the party did happen and it was extremely packed and they had to put data center travel on hold because of the flood of people trying to get in.
There's also a great interview of the club owners by asmongold on youtube, highly recommend if you're interested.
So in the end, nothing much happened. This incident mainly consisted of people all over the internet harassing Rain and flooding their Discord server to flame them to the point that they had to shut down their website and lock down the server. Was putting up the billboards a very dumb thing to do, definitely yes, but the amount of dogpiling they received was well past warranted (I don't doubt that they received multiple death threats) and well-deserving of the title of internet drama, even if we don't mention the amount of people jumping to clown on them because they think things like roleplay are "degenerate" activities.
Sorry we really went from free the nipple, take back the night, slut walks, and ending gender/sex segregation in sports being fucking milquetoast feminism 101 concepts to fucking girl dinner and "I just worry about fairness if we let trans girls play against cis ones" and "it was right of that woman to call the cops on a black man for existing near here in public during the day time because men are all violent monsters" and "radical feminism isn't transphobic we just need to kill all men including trans ones those oppressive traitors" and I will legit never be able to be normal about it. What the FUCK happened. I'd say I wonder what the feminists of my youth would say about this but I'm one and lemme tell ya I want to throw up. Go fucking read bell hooks or do something else useful please because all of this learned helplessness, gender essentialism, and transphobia dressed up as feminism is actively holding us back.
SILKSONG IN 2025 MENTIONED IN NINTENDO SWITCH 2 DIRECT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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