Third party tools Third party tools are Square Enix ' s term for programs that interact with the game ' s client . Official Square Enix policy . Third party tools are cheating tools that give an unfair advantage . All of them are completely banned both in " Final Fantasy XI " and " Final Fantasy XIV " . Violators of the ban may have their access to the game suspended or revoked . The GM s investigate reports of third party tool usage and punish the players responsible . Players who download third party tools are placing their characters and account at risk from both official punishment and malware - containing programs . Unofficial Square Enix policy . In actual practice , Square Enix is notably more lenient towards third party tool users than their official policy suggests . Square Enix ' s unofficial policy towards third party tools has been described as " see no evil , hear no evil , speak no evil " : Major categories of third party tools . Windowers . Upon release and for years afterward , " Final Fantasy XI " did not run in any mode other than fullscreen . If it detected that it was not running in fullscreen , it would shut down . This was a deliberate design decision by Square Enix , under the theory that this would eliminate cheat tool use . It failed utterly to do this . It did , however , prevent players from using informational and discussional web sites about the game , instant messaging programs , . mp3 players and other music programs and numerous other completely legitimate and beneficial programs at the same time as they were playing . So certain resourceful players wrote programs to fool the client into thinking it was running fullscreen while actually it was in a window . By the time Square Enix finally changed their minds years later , the third party windower programs were so advanced that they were considered overwhelmingly superior to Square Enix ' s own hastily - added and barely useful windowed mode ( which was never subsequently improved ) . Currently , there are dozens of plug - ins available for windowers , doing things like : It is rumored that even Square Enix staff have been spotted using a third party windower at official events . Hard statistics on third party tool use are hard to come by , but it is often said by players that if everyone using a windower was banned , they would instantly lose half the population . Parsers . A parser is a program that parses the message log in order to produce statistics . Usually , these statistics are things like how much damage each player in a group has done , or how many of the player ' s attacks actually hit . Highly competitive players are often motivated by a desire to move up the damage parsing relative rankings in groups they play in , and parsers are a part of the forum culture on certain MMORPG message boards . Bots . A bot is a program that performs an in - game action automatically . Common types of bots include : Other cheating tools . Besides bots , other common functions of cheating tools include : Data viewers . Technically , programs that view the client ' s data files are also considered third party tools . Data file viewing allows players to , among other things : This wiki , and others , depend heavily on data viewers . Player reactions . The playerbase is split on the issue of third party tool use . A small number echo Square Enix ' s official stance and condemn all third party tool use as immoral . A larger number support the use of the tools that are considered to improve gameplay experience without giving an unfair advantage . And a group of intermediate size between the first two camps will use whatever tool they find useful and will actively disdain any other players who has any ethical problems with this . In general , windowers , parsers , and data viewers are broadly supported , while bots and other cheating tools are not . Skillbots are the major exception , as a large number of players consider standing around for hours pressing a button every few seconds to be not valid gameplay .