A large number of Final Fantasy XIV’s Chinese gamers have reported cancellations and bans on their accounts after they used incorrect personal information to register on the game’s Japanese servers.
There have been groups of Chinese players playing on the Japanese servers to enjoy the faster expansions and updates for a few years. These gamers would normally use “HXD,” or literally “kind brothers,” as a code to communicate.
Since the release of the Endwalker expansion last December, the game has seen long login queues around the world due to the dense concentration of play hours, which is beyond the servers’ capacity.
The Chinese server is months behind the international servers and, as a result, does not have access to the expansion. Because of this, a lot more Chinese players have been registering on the Japanese server, causing friction with the native players. Some suspect that Chinese “HXD”s are being reported deliberately by other players, hence the massive ban wave.