Final Fantasy 14 world first Ultimate Raid challengers busted for cheating thanks to single pixel
Third cheating scandal in a row.
Yet another Final Fantasy 14 Ultimate Raid world first challenge has been scuppered by cheaters, who were busted due to a single pixel.
Ultimate Raids are the toughest missions in the MMORPG, with many groups competing to be the first to complete them in an unofficial, community-led challenge. The recent patch 7.1 added another Ultimate Raid, Futures Rewritten, which became the third in a row to be impacted by scandalous cheaters.
The winning team was GRIND, as shared by MogTalk creator and World Race tracker Frosty, at least initially. It soon transpired the team had been using a cheat hack, which was spotted due to a single pixel.
The incriminating pixel, PC Gamer explained, is indicative of the Pixel Perfect Plus plugin, which shows a character's exact hitbox. That's particularly useful when dodging AoE attacks in an Ultimate Raid, where the sheer number of attacks across battle arenas increases the difficulty dramatically.
Of course, third-party plugins are not allowed in Final Fantasy 14. As a result, Frosty has disqualified GRIND from the race.
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"I had our team research the plugin that was used by the team and it's capabilities makes it eligible for disqualification from the MogTalk leaderboard," Frosty wrote on X. "GRIND did not approve this member to use the plugin and do not agree with the actions he took."
Instead, Kindred has been awarded the world first clear of Future Rewritten. Frosty does note, however, that conversations must be had around the community-led challenge. Not all challengers stream their attempts (they wouldn't want others to copy), but that certainly makes it harder to police cheaters.
What's remarkable is that this is the third Ultimate Raid challenge in a row to be impacted by cheaters. Last year's world first clear of The Omega Protocol was revoked once it transpired the raid group was using third-party mods; the year before's Dragonsong's Reprise was a similar story.
After both of those challenges, director and producer Naoki Yoshida shared his disappointment at the use of third-party mods.
"It is extremely disappointing for me personally to see this commotion surrounding third-party tools once again in the wake of what happened with Dragonsong's Reprise (Ultimate)," he wrote last year. "As the individual who is entrusted with full supervision over Final Fantasy 14, it is my responsibility to enact countermeasures and police the use of these tools, as well as educate people to not use these types of third-party tools - this is especially unfortunate when I, as a gamer, am cheering on everyone who is learning this content by trial and error and putting in the effort to clear."
No such statement has yet been made following this year's controversy.
Back in 2022, Yoshida said the Final Fantasy 14 team would "review the most prominent tools, and in order to discourage their use, endeavour to enhance the functionality of the HUD". And yet two years on, the use of these tools prevails.