The last 24 hours have been quite a journey for the Final Fantasy XIV community in regards to the Race to World First for The Omega Protocol (Ultimate), which is some of the hardest content in the game. UNNAMED_ came in hot yesterday and claimed to have a clear until images of cheating started surfacing on the internet, and now their rewards have been taken away.
Viewers of the race were immediately suspicious of UNNAMED_ when they popped up on FF Logs as the first team to get a clear because there were no stats, no VODs, and they hadn’t streamed any of their pulls. Regardless, the team was considered the World First due to their prominence in past races until some images and footage leaked of one of the players using zoom and hitbox hacks, giving the team an unfair advantage.
The ripple effect of the cheating hit a climax this morning when Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida made a statement regarding the cheating and other leaked content that was distributed relating to the duty. He stated that if cheating was found, penalties would be given, but those penalties would not be made public. He also mentioned that he does not consider this team to have the World First clear, which solidified the opinions of many fans who wanted to disregard UNNAMED_’s result.
No one knew if the team would have their clear taken away from them, but it seems that question has now been answered. One of the members of the team was visited by a GM named Hades and told that although their account wasn’t found to be cheating, they were in a party with a cheater in order to get the clear, and would have their title and achievement taken away from them at a later date. They were also instructed to delete the weapon they earned from the clear.
The disgraced team has now been taken off of FF Logs as well, although fans aren’t sure if UNNAMED_ took it down or FF Logs did. Either way, the race is still considered to be active, and a World First team has yet to be crowned.
