A Final Fantasy 14 ‘Pimp’ Says He Was Banned for Protecting Sex Workers

A Final Fantasy XIV “pimp” said that he was temporarily banned from the game for standing up for one of his in-game sex workers. 

Let’s back up for a minute and explain how the above statement is even possible: FFXIV is a massively multiplayer online game (like World of Warcraft) based on the mega popular Final Fantasy role-playing game series. Like most successful MMOs, FFXIV has found a dedicated audience that is just as interested in its emergent social aspects as it is in slaying monsters, leveling up, or collecting gear. 

One of these emergent social activities is erotic role-playing, where players act out sex with others using their characters, text, or voice chat. All forms of role-playing are more intense on dedicated “role-playing servers,” where players do their best not to break character. Balmung is a notoriously rowdy role-playing server, and in late June, it held an erotic role-playing event. 

It was during this event that a player who goes by the name Danny Rant-Mateus got in trouble. Rant-Mateus, who described himself as kind of “ERP [erotic role-play] pimp,” role-plays that job, though seemingly without the negative connotations. Rant-Mateus runs a business within the game managing sex workers who dance and perform other services for paying clients. He’ll broker deals with “Joes,” or clients, who want to pay for time with one of his over 100 contractors. Sex work is fairly common in FFXIV, and players start up their own small businesses, like brothels, to earn in-game currency. Rant-Mateus negotiates what happens between his contractors and their clients ahead of their meeting.

When one of his contractors came to him with a problem in the middle of the big erotic role-playing event on Balmung, Rant-Mateus had to step in to defend him—and it got him banned for more than a week.  

In a now-deleted Reddit post after the ban, Rant-Mateus said he was ”Banned [for] 10 days for being a pimp.” Rant-Mateus wrote that for this party, he brought “a stable of 20, mostly bun bois, miqos, and 2 burly roe males. At the ERP event, things were going well and I made sure my people are comfortable and in appropriate situations. Well, eventually there was a problem. Daddy Rant doesn’t like problems.” “Bun bois” refers to the often-sexualized Viera race, “miqos” are Miqo'te, better known as catgirls and boys, and “roes” are Roegadyn, a vaguely bear-like race in the game.  

Usually, big events are simply a good time. But at this event, one of the clients tried to push a non-consensual sexual assault role playing scenario onto the worker mid-session, according to Rant-Mateus. “This was followed by harassment from his friends calling my contractor horrible homophobic names (it was one of my male contractors), which resulted in me being called in,” Rant-Mateus told me. He confronted the client privately, and when the client told Rant-Mateus to “fuck off,” he said, he took it to the public chat, a chat room that anyone in the game can read.

“Then I started ripping him a new one and calling him out for what he wanted,” he said. “It got pretty bad on my end because I get really personal.” The client and his friends left, but not before reporting Rant-Mateus for harassment, he said. “After that, we finished the night and a day or so later I got banned.” Rant-Mateus was banned from the game for 10 days, according to the email notification he received from the game’s developer Square Enix, viewed by Motherboard. The email said he was banned for violating the game’s rules against profanity and offensive language.

Erotic role playing is a way for people to express themselves sexually within many MMOs. Square Enix has previously said that sexual activity is allowed in FFXIV as long as it’s private and consensual. As in many massive multiplayer online role playing games, there’s a thriving community of people engaged in ERP, and events are a way to bring them all together. “These events are awesome, and everyone normally has a good time!” Rant-Mateus said. “I’d encourage people to go to any of these events when they have time; it’s a blast even if you’re not being sexual.” 

Erotic play gets a bad reputation in the role-playing community, Rant-Mateus said, with people calling participants degenerates, perverts, or other demeaning things. “Dehumanizing people for having a kink or fetish is just disgusting and I do my best to provide a positive image for this community,” he said. “My contractors and customers have a good time and then they have great conversations; people in this community want to connect with one another so they have a safe place to be themselves. Which is something everybody wants in life... ERP isn’t disgusting, its humans connecting with one another.”