FFXIV: Endwalker’s release brings increased traffic to spoiler blocking service in Japan

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-12-03 15:53 (JST)
Translated by. Nick Mosier

The Early Access release of Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion Endwalker will go live on December 3. The expansion brings players the conclusions of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark story arc which has been running since the release of A Realm Reborn all the way back in 2013, and fans have high expectations for what the story will bring.

But like with many games and other media, there’s the problem of spoilers. The game’s official patch notes even ask players to be considerate of spoilers, and many players are likely taking measures of their own to remain spoiler free.

The best method is to just avoid social media altogether, but for those times when the story moves you and you just have to say something, there’s a service in Japan that hides your spoilers from tweets. fusetter from Shinko Technomist is a service that lets users post symbols in place of characters and longer bits of text into Twitter. On November 30, the fusetter official Twitter account made a tweet referencing FFXIV’s latest expansion.

fusetter does tweet when games and movies launch to recommend using the service, but a post like this before a game’s release is a little unusual. We went ahead and asked them what prompted the tweet, and they said the team kept seeing tweets concerned about how their mascot character, Fuse-inu, is holding up under the stress of potential heavy usage. It sounds like Warriors of Light are concerned about how the service is about to handle the increased usage of players looking to hide their Endwalker spoilers.

When we asked how many users were using the service to avoid FFXIV spoilers, they said, “while we don’t take detailed statistics, it certainly seems like a lot.” The previous expansion Shadowbringers also apparently brought a lot of users, but it doesn’t sound like it was enough that they couldn’t process and display them all.

It’s hard to estimate how many new users Endwalker will bring to the service, but fusetter says they’re ready to increase their capacity as needed. There might be times when the service slows down under the heavy load, so you may need to wait a bit and try again later if you want to post spoilers.

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker’s Early Access begins at 1:00 a.m. (PST)/4:00 a.m. (EST) on December 3, with the patch being available to download beforehand.

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