Why Final Fantasy 14 is Being Review Bombed by Fans [Square's crackdown on MODs, game modifications]

Appreciate ruining the clickbait title!

FF14 devs have historically been anti modding, arguably the most anti mod stance of all the major mmos, so i dont know why theyre complaining now.

they do so pretty publicly as well

They have a reason? And by devs, do you mean Square Enix, or have the actual programmers gone on the record saying it?
- the director himself is usually the one who comes out and explains it and whats happening behind the scenes. Hence when they address it, he will be talking as himself as rather the team in official blogposts. Theyve been litigious against mods early in the year so youd be hard pressed to think they want it there.
  generally speaking, most mmo companies have a similar clause and they take mods on a case by case basis. FF14 is the only one that constantly reminds people Moddings Bad Mkay, don't do it, and actually acts (bans) on it.
- Square themselves. They've gone on record god knows how many times stating that Mods are not allowed in the game. full stop. even stating as much in Live streams for upcoming patches/expansions and Q&As. So the community freaking out now is sort of a "really? what did you expect?" type of deal.

The community is being dumb and spoiled. They did this to themselves by publicly talking about the mod even on fucking shout ingame.

Mods are not allowed (we can argue about this but that's not the point now) so everyone using mods knows (or should know) that talking about mods ingame and in public places like the fucking Square Enix forums is not a thing you should be doing.

And what did they do? All of it. So many times that in events they were even flooding the ingame chats about the mods.

You dumb assholes brought this to yourselves by breaking the TOS and talking about it freely.

Yeah they've always taken a hard stance on using mods. It's still crazy to me that they went after a mod that was used heavily by their massive RP community. When I played FFXIV for a few months, I learned most of their players do their grinding outside of dungeons.

What’s there to mod in an online game? The UI?

so there's a thing called XIVLauncher which is fanmade and is a MUCH better game launcher than the native one by Square. It downloads patches/installs WAY faster PLUS it has amazing Linux support. With the launcher comes something called Delamud or mod or whatever. this is essentially an in game mod browser allowing you to download mods for the game. You're right that the majority of mods are UI based stuff or ease of life mods.
That being said there's also the "other" mods. These mods can change the appearance of your characters model and gear. some VERY NSFW stuff. These mods are local side only so no other player is going to see your cat girl with Triple D tits.
Square has made a stance on mods in the game for years, a VERY known stance to the player base, that mods of any kind are NOT allowed and can result in a ban if you've been caught using them. The community has been playing on the edge with this and the fact that they're mad about it NOW is silly. they KNOW the policy, Square has made it clear to them SEVERAL times, and they've chose to ignore it.
There's... so much you can mod in the game. And a lot of it is classified +18.
You'd be amazed what a third party 14-Launcher could mod. All sorts of automation was the major draw for me.