Square Enix announced earlier this week that over 5,000 Final Fantasy XIV players were banned after they were caught using or advertising real money in-game.
As spotted by PCGamesN, on March 4 FFXIV publisher Square Enix revealed via a news post on the FFXIV website that 5851 players had been banned for their involvement with real money trading or other “prohibited activities.” 5037 players were banned for directly participating in real money trading. Meanwhile, another 814 players were banned for simply advertising real money trading.
According to Square Enix using real money in-game for trades or other activities is prohibited in the terms of service, which players agree to before creating an account. Even advertising or just trying to use real money is bad enough that Square Enix will bring the banhammer down. These bans all happened between Feb. 25 and March 3.
This isn’t the first time Square Enix has revealed a massive wave of account bans. Back in 2019, the publisher banned over 10,000 players for similar real money trading violations.