Final Fantasy 14 'world first' raiders busted immediately for cheating thanks to a single pixel in a screenshot, making it the 3rd scuffed Ultimate race in a row

pcgamer.com:

Final Fantasy 14 had its latest Ultimate raid released this week, and there's already a controversy. In case you're completely unfamiliar, Ultimate raids are the biggest endgame challenge an Eorzean can tackle—tough fights that can take months to learn and beat for your average joe. World-first raiders dedicated enough to block off an entire week are a lot faster, but even then, Ultimates are still gruelling gauntlets meant to test their mettle. Teams, called 'statics', assemble and pull long shifts to take them on, sacrificing sleep and sanity to be the first to do so.

All this to say, they're a task worthy of a race to world first. The 'victors' this time were GRIND, according to MogTalk's Frosty, who tracks the world's first races. GGs were given to the undisputed champions, and—wait, hold on, what's that pixel in the middle of the screenshot?

While GRIND has since deleted the screenshot, forcing me to instead share some top-tier memes, a single pixel in the celebratory screengrab has served as a smoking gun. It's a telltale sign of the Pixel Perfect Plus plugin, which shows your character's exact hitbox for the purposes of dodging AoE attacks—huge when you're in an Ultimate, where deadly mechanics can render most of the floor into instant death zones. Naughty, naughty.

For context, while MMORPGs like World of Warcraft might permit the use of interface addons, third-party plugins are against Final Fantasy 14's terms of service, no matter how cool they might be. However, they're still commonly used, because Square Enix has taken a 'don't be an idiot' philosophy towards them.

Essentially, the dev team won't take measures to spy on your computer with intrusive anti-cheat software, but they will ban you if you're obviously cheating. Similarly, you can get away with having a damage meter plugin to track your own progress just fine, but if you flame someone in a dungeon for low DPS, you're cruising for a suspension.

In this case, Frosty has already disqualified GRIND