Final Fantasy 14 can be a very social game if you really want it to be. It's an MMO, which means you're constantly running into other players in small groups, and you can dive into loads of different forms of content that have whole communities built around them. I've made some very good friends on Final Fantasy 14, and there are countless stories of people meeting their significant others on there too.

That being said, it's probably best not to view Final Fantasy 14 as a place to actually look for romance, which is why the idea of FF14 Tinder has always been derided and mocked by the vast majority of the game's playerbase. That hasn't stopped some from trying though, as a new dating app called Aetherlove is causing a bit of a stir within Final Fantasy 14 circles.

Aetherlove Is Getting All The Hate From FF14 Players

If you're curious, AetherLove is essentially an in-game plugin that you can install and set up, which acts pretty much exactly like Tinder. You create a profile for your character, you set the preferences of people that you want to talk to, and then you swipe right and left on the profiles given to you in an attempt to match. If you match, you talk to each other privately, and AetherLove guarantees it's "100% safe."

Unfortunately, the way that AetherLove has gone about promoting itself has caused some issues. For starters, the person or people behind the plugin have paid for official advertising via Twitter, which is quite possibly the most flagrant violation of Final Fantasy 14's terms of service that you could get besides maybe verbally abusing someone in the game.

For context, mod usage in Final Fantasy 14 as a whole is against terms of service. However, you can't stop modders, regardless of how badly you want to, so it's been something that director Yoshi-P has deliberately let slide for a while. It's only until mod usage becomes a problem that Square Enix steps in, as we've seen before in the case of Mare Synchronous, a plugin that allowed people to see the mods that other people were using. Basically, if you keep quiet about mods, Yoshi-P lets it slide.

Advertising a plugin on social media like a brand would an official product is not being quiet about mods, and now plenty of people are worried this will add fuel to a potential crack down on mods that could happen should things get even more out of hand.

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Then you also have the absurdity of the app itself. Not only does it appear to be very heavily developed with AI, as all the plugin's advertisements feature AI-generated imagery, but the app itself is also filled with bun boys and heavily modded cat girls. There also appears to be reports of users stealing gposes, catfishing as other players. It really does sound like Tinder.

I'm not going to yuck anyone's yum here, but the entire thing is essentially a giant red flag that will almost definitely get picked up by Square Enix, and is filled with people showing off how many mods they use. If there's anything that's going to make Square Enix go after Dalamud, it's more and more plugins like this, so you can see why the Final Fantasy 14 community is up in arms at the moment.

Final Fantasy 14 Like Follow Followed MMORPG Adventure Open-World Systems Released August 27, 2013 ESRB Teen / Blood, Language, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco, Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact Developer(s) Square Enix Publisher(s) Square Enix Engine Originally the Crystal Tools engine, but currently it's a custom engine using parts of the Luminous Engine. 10 Images Close
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