Over 5,000 Final Fantasy 14 players were banned for real-money trading in one week

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Between February 25 and March 3 this year, Square Enix banned over 5,000 players from Final Fantasy 14 for activities related to real-money trading. Though paying for in-game gear, boosts, and so on with actual money is prohibited, there are still plenty of people out there selling items, raid clears, mounts, PvP ranks, whole accounts, and the in-game currency of gil, which people are supposed to be trading with.

In a recent news post, Square Enix announced that 5,037 players were banned for participating in real-money trading, and a further 814 were banned for advertising it. Players who see real-money trading being advertised were advised, "any witnessed RMT advertisement can be reported by right clicking the character name in the chat log and selecting the menu [Report] -> [Report RMT Activity]."

We recently spoke to game director Naoki Yoshida about Final Fantasy 14's next expansion, Endwalkers, and how it's going to provide the kind of climactic ending you don't get from other MMOs.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.