Final Fantasy XVI finally arrives on Windows PCs today, over a year after its launch on the PlayStation 5. That means expanded access for a game that sold below Square Enix’s expectations on console. But it also means the first opportunity for modders to add their own content to the game.
For game producer Naoki Yoshida, though, that new opportunity comes along with a plea for the user community to behave themselves when modifying the game. In a recent interview with PC Gamer, Yoshida felt the need to step in when director Hiroshi Takai was asked about what “goofy mods” he would like to see in the game.
“If we said, ‘It’d be great if someone made xyz,’ it might come across as a request, so I’ll avoid mentioning any specifics here!” Yoshida told PC Gamer. “The only thing I will say is that we definitely don’t want to say anything offensive or inappropriate, so please don’t make or install anything like that.”
It’s a plea that’s likely to fall on deaf ears, if history is any guide. A quick perusal of the Nexus Mods page for the Final Fantasy VII Remake turns up everything from the relatively tame “sexy dress Aerith” and “Regular Dress Cloud” mods to the much less appropriate “Tifa 4K Hi-Poly Nude Mod” (which is blocked by Nexus Mods’ filters unless you actively enable adult content). A little Googling can easily find forums with multipage threads of explicitly adult-oriented mods for the game as well.
Get used to it
This isn’t exactly a new type of concern for Japanese game developers. In 2015, Dead or Alive 5 producer Yosuke Hayashi asked “PC users to play our game in good moral and manner” (a bit ironic for a series so focused on scantily clad, buxom female competitors). Last year, Capcom went even further by likening PC game modding to “cheating,” citing the “reputational damage caused by malicious mods” that can be “offensive to public order and morals.”
“When these [offensive mods] are disseminated, the image of the product is tarnished and branding is affected,” Capcom said, adding that when these mods are “mistaken for legitimate implementations” it can cause “reputational damage” and “bad publicity.”
Bandai Namco, meanwhile, has taken legal action against Dark Souls modders and, more recently, started taking down YouTube videos featuring Tekken mods. Tekken director/producer Katsuhiro Harada went so far as to ask one Tekken modder to “plz stop” with his Elden Ring-themed mod for the game, even while he praised the mod as “ridiculously well-made.”
Um … Sure, Elden is a Bandai Namco-funded title, and I was the production general manager in charge of Elden, so it’s not irrelevant … it’s ridiculously well-made mod but plz stop it lol
— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) March 31, 2022
“Personally, I wouldn’t say anything for your personal enjoyment,” Harada said in a follow-up post. “The only problem is that many people misunderstand it as official and ask us to support the problems it causes (I’m tired of this wrong inquiry).”
While we understand how annoying it is for random players to confuse a fan mod with a developer’s core product, it’s well past time for these developers to start accepting that this is how PC gaming works. When you publish a game on an open platform like the PC, you relinquish some level of control over what the community does with the gaming canvas you’ve given them. If a developer isn’t comfortable with that, they should stay out of PC games altogether.
Rather than chastising “inappropriate” mods, maybe developers should try to embrace the attitude that FFXVI director Takai was able to express in an interview posted on the Epic Games Store: “Feel free to have fun on your own,” he said. “Within reason, of course!”