The drama surrounding Final Fantasy XIV‘s GShade is palpable, the custom ReShade fork having been found to include code to restart users’ computers if they dared to use its shaders with another ReShade fork. You’ll want to uninstall GShade, and quick. Especially since it no longer works.
It’s not as if there’s much choice to uninstall GShade now, as the GitHub for the program has been shuttered either by developer Morat or GitHub themselves, and the program has to phone home to update.
How to Completely Remove GShade from FFXIV
You can uninstall GShade from the control panel like any other program, but you have to do some additional cleanup to completely remove it. The program was designed to be cumbersome and difficult to wipe from your system totally. Be sure to reboot after doing the primary uninstall.
From there, navigate to C:\Users\Public folder and delete both the GShade Backups and GShade Custom Shaders folders.
Last but not least, find the game’s directory. If you installed FFXIV to the default suggested directory, it should be in either:
- Standalone installation directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV – A Realm Reborn\game
- Steam installation directory: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\FINAL FANTASY XIV Online\game
Delete dxgi.dll from the game folder in your Final Fantasy XIV directory. Delete d3d11.dll if it’s present as well.
Third-party programs like GShade are against the Final Fantasy XIV TOS, and unfortunately, this situation is precisely an example of why. It’s worth being aware that GShade certainly isn’t the only third-party tool that calls to an outside server. But now that you know how to uninstall GShade, you’re safe from the malware threat it posed. For more, read some of our other FFXIV guides on GameSkinny.
Featured image by GameSkinny.
