A Controversial FFXIV Mod, GShade, Returns; But The Community Isn’t Convinced
Back in February, one of the more popular Final Fantasy XIV mods became embroiled in controversy. GShade was used by many to enhance their experience playing the MMO or simply add some flair to their GPose pictures. Unfortunately, some users began reporting that this modification was causing their PCs to restart unexpectedly.
Marot Satil, the developer of GShade, admitted to adding code that would prevent users from circumvent the mod’s new update and password system. If it detected an attempt, the mod simply reset your PC entirely – leaving users dissatisfied.
Beyond just rebooting people’s PCs, the major concern was that the mod could do anything – something its creator acknowledged. “Anti-tampering code is nothing new in proprietary software. This was meant as a lesson to [NotNite] specifically about taking this approach; anything could have been in the payload and you’d have been responsible for distributing and activating it,” they explained. This move caused many to switch away from GShade towards rival mod ReShade while Satil also completely took down GShade itself.”
On the FFXIV subreddit, users noticed GShade was back online a few days ago. Unfortunately, due to false reports it was removed and only returned one day later. Furthermore, no acknowledgement or apology were offered by whoever brought this mod back online.
NotNite, the user behind the GShade update workaround that caused all this controversy, warned people against downloading his mod. “Remember: you probably shouldn’t run anything created by a known malware developer. I’ll attempt to adjust my scraper to match up with the new version endpoints tonight so I can monitor any silent updates he may do,” they posted on Reddit.
ReShade offers an alternative to the controversial update system and uses fewer system resources. There are various community migration guides for players looking to transition from GShade to ReShade, plus it works across multiple games.
