[TW: Transphobia, Harassment] FFXIV China operations team silences trans player after targeted hate speech campaign
TL;DR: A transgender woman player on the FFXIV CN server was targeted by a transphobic hate campaign after posting a polite recruitment thread on CN The Lodestone. Instead of punishing the harassers, the official community moderators deleted the victim’s posts, citing that her post “caused majority resentment”. They are also banning community members who speak out against this discrimination, while turning a blind eye to the extreme hate speech from the harassers. We are seeking international visibility to hold the operator accountable.
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A transgender woman player named Venera posted a recruitment thread on Rising Stones (CN server equivalent of The Lodestone). She was looking for a partner, and her post was exceptionally transparent, detailing her identity as a transgender lesbian and her life experiences. She even included a disclaimer asking those who don’t agree with her lifestyle to simply ignore the post.
Instead of “ignoring” it, transphobic groups targeted her with vitriolic hate speech, telling her to “get out of FFXIV”. When Venera tried to report the harassment, she found the reporting tool was broken (a technical bug). She then made a second post specifically to report this bug and the harassment she was facing.
The FFXIV CN official community moderation team’s response has been shocking: They didn’t ban the harassers. Instead, they deleted Venera’s recruitment thread and her bug report. The reason given for deletion was “causing majority resentment”. Essentially, the mods treated her identity as “offensive content” because bigots complained about it. Evidence from the official deletion notice shows that her post was reported by only four individuals. The mods are using the voice of four bigots to represent the “majority” and justify silencing a minority player.
While Venera herself remains active, the mods have begun banning other players who commented in her defense. Cruelly, the extreme hate speech and slurs used by the harassers remain untouched; despite multiple reports from the community, the moderators have refused to take action against the aggressors.
This isn’t just a local server dispute. This is about a licensed operator of Final Fantasy XIV using “majority resentment” as a justification to enable transphobia. We are calling on the global community and Square Enix to look into how the FFXIV brand is being managed in China. Inclusivity shouldn’t be a regional option.
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Related links:
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Official deletion notice: Screenshot showing the “4 reports” used as justification for “majority resentment”.
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Venera’s re-posted bug report: Contains the full original recruitment text. As of now, the comment section is still flooded with transphobic hate speech.
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See also X user
@jidediebeizi’s post
This thread has gotten pretty contentious so a couple of quick reminders before you comment:
Transphobia is an immediate permaban here. It always has been, always will be, and the mod team does not hesitate to enforce this rule.
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Regardless of my opinion of the post, I can say with a completely educated opinion of China, Chinese culture, and Chinese gaming culture, that I'd be very, very surprised if anything is done about this.
SE would never open that can of worms with the Chinese publisher regardless how they feel about it.
No company would. It's a fucking mess.
They stand to lose coverage in China altogether if they point out that their moderators are enabling bigotry. Meaning Chinese players may not have a Final Fantasy 14 to log back into if they speak up. This sucks so much.
Considering the multiple mass harassment campaigns in JP, I don't think they'd do much of anything anyway
Not to mention NA
One of the worst recent examples of this culture was Li Wenliang, the ophthalmogist who first noticed the symptoms of Covid in one of his patients. He basically warned his fellow alumni about it in a WeChat group and got indicted as a whistleblower for rumor mongering.
Only after his death (to Covid) and huge amounts of pushback did he get proclaimed a 'martyr' by the Chinese government.
Yeah I read this post and was thinking to myself "and is anyone surprised in any way?"
It sucks for sure, but I agree I feel like nothing is likely to be done by this.
Absolutely zero chance SE will touch this with a 10 foot pole.
Yeah. This is essentially a bunch of people yelling into the ether because SE are and will never get into these messes
operation of the game and moderation on the CN side is completely controlled by china and there is pretty much nothing that square enix could or want to do as this is the way every game operates in china
The situation really sucks but calling them out on reddit is really going to go nowhere to be brutally honest here
That's about par for the course for China.
Casual reminder that China is not a progressive country. There are things they do better because of centralized authority, but there are also an equal amount of things they are really bad at.
Danmei authors getting literally arrested :(
Which is so goddamn hypocritical because The Untamed, TV show which was adapted from the danmei Mo Dao Zu Shi, gave the country record breaking profits
That sucks, but not much we can do to a locked down China.
China is just a different world to the rest of us in so many ways
That sucks, but I don't know what you are expecting to be done about it by posting about it here.
CN community management is not handled by SE.
CN server management and operation is not handled by SE.
CN culture, politics, censorship, and societal norms are not handled by SE.
Sounds about right for china
You cant bring attention to this issue the same way you can here. China is a very different online environment and public opinion there does not support things like trans rights issues.
Overall this fucking sucks...but it's also China. We'll be lucky if we ever hear from Venera again.
Though I have to ask why this user was using a recruitment thread meant to recruit players for content to find a potential partner?
Maybe it was specifically for a game partner, not a life partner?
Given how rampant and widespread the conversion therapy business is in China, I’m not surprised Chinese internet isn’t safe either.
I'm guessing going to the XIV official forum would be a better way to go about it because there's nothing we can do here. I don't use the forum so I have no idea if that kind of callout is allowed tho
They won’t either it’s China
Yea, that's how the Chinese culture is.
Nothing we can do about it. The JP culture probably is not much different, just less direct.
NA might also go towards that opinion when listing to the current people in power.
Yeah, as much as I'd love to dunk on China here, it'd be pretty glass houses when my country is like six months away from making it legal to hunt trans people for sport.
surprise surprise bringing up anything critical about cn devolves into whataboutism instantly.
I've played FFXIV on the CN server, and to be honest, the community environment is terrible right now. It's like a drying ocean; as the number of normal players decreases, the toxic ones become much more obvious.
I played on the Global servers for two years and never had a single conflict with anyone. The vibes were always friendly. But on the CN server, I feel like I have to walk on eggshells just doing my daily roulettes. If someone makes a tiny mistake—like a sprout watching a cutscene, or a player accidentally taking avoidable damage—people immediately start complaining and getting toxic.
These bad apples also attack normal players for absolutely no reason, like initiating a vote kick right near the end of a dungeon. Why? I have no idea. It benefits literally no one.
On Chinese FFXIV forums (like Tieba), the drama culture is insane. People love to just grab popcorn and watch arguments blow up, with threads about the most trivial things easily reaching hundreds of replies. "Naming and shaming" (call-out posts)—where people post someone's in-game ID to publicly witch-hunt them—is incredibly common. (I'm pretty sure this kind of witch-hunting would get you banned immediately on Global.)
Regarding the LGBTQ+ community, while I do sometimes see Party Finder listings like "gay only" or "lesbian only," the harassment problem is actually quite serious. I have hardly seen any moderation or rectification efforts by the CN operators to address it.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the CN servers shut down one day, and if they do, it will be entirely their own fault.
Quite unfortunately it sounds pretty par for the course in China.
A good number of my relatives back in China (some of which are CPC officials serving in local and regional governmental positions) are quite disparaging against LGBTQ+ individuals in general, especially with regards to the latter few.
This tracks with their stance on gay culture. Last I knew, it's technically illegal to distribute anything that is/promotes homosexuality.
It's incredibly sad that some place that they could try and be themselves got crushed. I hope that they'll be safe and no further backlash comes their way.
SE has to abide to local laws, so I don't know if we'll ever get a 100% confirmed lgbtq+ character cause they got to play it safe for players located in China, or it might get banned. And that is huge revenue they'll lose. Like for the U.S., they've been adjusting for their ratings and making sure it's within bounds because of all the 'video games cause violence ' rhetoric. Another huge revenue that they could lose.
It's sad to read but SE as a company won't take stance or do anything about it because CN is managed by CN and their netizen can really be into crazy hatred circle.
Best for that person to stay out of the fire for a while or simply find a way around.
From my own experience on EU server, unless you find a very fiting community It's best to never talk about yourself or any specific information of IRL condition.
Long story short, peoples are jerk and cruel whatever their own culture or country, always thread with caution online.
Regardless of anyone's sexual or gender identity, normalizing using FF14 as a platform to find a romantic partner is fucking bad for the game.
That’s just how mmo works in China, ff14 is far from the worst of it.
OP, you're either naive or ignorant af of geopolitics (and cultural differences) if you think Square Enix Japan is even gonna do anything about this.
And I say this as someone of East Asian ethnic background.