This seems to have been my observation. It would be nice if VRChat more openly explained what problem/niche this is solving/catering to when launching new features like this, at least so the general public can understand this stuff better. I typically see why VRChat releases things these days, but it may not be easy for others.
To me, this lives somewhere between “fully custom avatars” and “cloning someone’s avatar”.
This payment system encourages avatar creators to upload higher quality avatars, and it makes it easier for users to find these avatars.
So it both doesn’t really replace any existing functionality, but also provides a tool/solution for a particular group of people. I think this feature will be a net positive. Such as:
- If you don’t want to buy avatars on there, you don’t have to
- If you don’t want to sell avatars on there, you don’t have to
- If you do, you do
- You can still make custom avatars
- You can still find public avatars
My best guess is that the volume of creators who are going to release fewer free, public avatars is not going to decrease much. I would imagine that it would be more likely for existing creators who make paid avatars on other platforms, will likely use VRChat as a way to advertise/convert to other platforms.
They might get some sales, but most of their sales will be people seeing the avatars that they can try in VRChat, and then go buy for cheaper on another platform + get the files to customize themselves. So yeah, as a way to say, “Here’s this cool avatar you can buy on gumroad/booth,” and there’s a more direct way to test the avatar and go find it, will be the primary use case.