Now that 2 players are fighting, FFXIV fans are losing one of their most popular unofficial features
GShade was one of Final Fantasy XIV’s most popular third-party tools. Now it’s no longer available due to a dispute between two community modders.
What is GShade? This is one version by ReShade, which was customized specifically for FFXIV. ReShade is a so-called “post-processing injector” that can subsequently influence the graphics in games.
It can make the colors prettier, the assets sharper, or add other effects that are not usually available in the games. Developed by FFXIV player Marot Satil, GShade gained great popularity.
Although third-party tools like GShade are officially banned in FFXIV, many fans use them. On the server the GPSers, the “home” of GShade, was teeming with thousands of FFXIV players, and many streamers and YouTubers also took advantage of the popular unofficial feature. But that has now changed.
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Modder packs malware into his program and quickly rows back
who quarreled A few days ago, a dispute broke out between the creator of GShade, Marot, and another modder named NotNite, which resulted in the demise of the popular app.
Apparently unhappy with the way GShade works, NotNite decided to add their own modifications to the tool. He created an alternative version “GeezShade” that could download and use GShade’s graphical presets.
In a blog post NotNite explained that GShade sucks:
- If an update was available, the tool was shut down until the update was performed.
- Settings were lost after updates.
- There would be intrusive pop-ups.
With GeezShade, players were able to use the version of NotNite without the downsides, but with all the graphical settings and templates they’ve crafted in GShade over the years.
Marot responded to the new version by adding additional code to his tool. He made sure that GeezShade users were forced to restart their PCs when they started the program.
OH MAN pic.twitter.com/GDcdwZMC48
— soot 𓅂 𓁹 (6.3 DONE… YEET) (@RaVenZeYs) February 6, 2023
In a post on Discord, he wrote that he intentionally built this feature in to prevent third-party tampering with his tool. Normal GShade users are not affected.
Marot explains that the forced shutdown was specifically intended as a lesson for NotNite to stay away from GShade: “[…] It could have been anything in the payload and you would have been responsible for distributing it to people and running it. I deliberately chose to reboot because it’s something completely harmless. […]”
But even if the restart seems rather harmless, it is still considered malware and immediately caused a hard backlash from the community.
What is that? The term malware is made up of the English words “malicious” and “software”. This is software (such as viruses, worms, etc.) that can penetrate computer systems and cause malfunctions or damage there.
This is how the argument went: Marot’s statement caused a lot of anger within the FFXIV GPoser community. Many fans were angry that the modder injected malware into the tool.
The statement that the forced restart was harmless and that Marot could have added something much worse was also not well received. It was perceived as a threat that this could happen in the future.
This was followed by a wave of GShade uninstalls, with instructions on exactly how to remove the tool entirely without backups while keeping its default settings. The official FFXIV subreddit banned GShade from their discord and forums.
In the end, Marot apologized for the intrusion and explained that the reset code was removed from GShade. But it was probably too late for that. A short time later, the tool disappeared from the Github pagewhere it used to be downloadable, and from the official GPosers site.
The GPosers Discord has been completely shut down. It is now impossible to post there. Many former GShade fans are now looking for alternatives to beautify the game for themselves.
The director of FFXIV, Naoki Yoshida, has repeatedly expressed disappointment with the use of third-party tools in the past:
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