I genuinely don’t understand what this provides in terms of actual customer value. It doesn’t solve any problems users are currently having; we already have highly visible avatar search worlds that helps users find avatars that fit them. The only reason folks purchase an avatar is to have a personally customized one. Unity isn’t a barrier with having an avatar at all, it’s a barrier to having a fully customized and personal one. That’s something this marketplace simply does not provide. Depending on how it’s implemented, it just has the potential to create a noob trap where new players pay for a premade avi and then when they want to customize it they learn they must buy it again elsewhere for the files
As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, this would be a far better idea to implement with props, which I’m really surprised y’all haven’t done already since they’re a really good idea and could help optimize a ton of bloated avatars
So will i lose the avatar i have been using for months and have to buy it to get it back or does it stay as mine because i already use it because i found it a long time ago and i love my avatar
I do want to point out that on Booth and storefronts like that, they already allow everything to be included with the purchases that sellers would want to include.
VRChat’s avatar marketplace is unique in that it doesn’t allow everything that a seller would want to include, so that’s why you haven’t seen it before - There hasn’t been a need to refer people offsite until now!
I swear every time I check in on this game, it’s just another greedy, anti-user update after another. Why not monetize something worthwhile, like a gamemode or something? Maybe just make the game $5-$10? Honestly, this makes roblox look less predatory in terms of monetization, with the way the revenue split and minimum required revenue is set up.
The information about the new system is interesting, but I have a rather serious question. On Gumroad, it’s common to upload full avatars, whereas on Booth, things work a bit differently—you usually buy a base, the clothing separately, and upload everything in a relatively simple way through Unity with just a few clicks.
If I understood correctly, this system is mainly based on full avatars. Let’s take Minase as an example—it’s a fairly popular and widely used avatar from Booth. It’s so commonly used precisely because people buy the clothes they like and add them later. Almost nobody uses the default avatar.
These clothes are added using a plugin called Modular Avatar. Will the store have something similar?
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.
Lying
This is absolutely so bullshit, originally VRChat was against this, but now because its monetized, they are all for it. Classic enshittification of a platform.
Make up your mind.
Monetization
If monetization is what you want, you’ll have to deal with legal shenanigans first.
Investing
If I were an investor (Disclosure, I am, and was considering putting a bit into this company), I would not invest and/or I would pull my investment.
With how the customers are reacting, this is not a good look VRChat.
This is classic Anti-consumer movement, aimed at trying to take away customers privileges.
In the end, VRChat is digging its own grave, I recommend other platforms to take your business to if you are an independent artist or 3D creator.
This isn’t uncommon - for example Google and Apple have similar requirement to pay to join their developer programs before you can publish anything. Steam works in a similar way - you have to pay $100 to publish a game, but they will give it back after you make $1000.
People buy avatars to obtain a license to use them. If you find a public copy of a commercial avatar in a search world, it’s usually been uploaded in violation of the creator’s ToS (unless it’s a sample version uploaded by the creator themselves). These copies shouldn’t be there in the first place.
I’m wondering how this will affect people who make re-textures for avatars and sell them. On Gumroad, or something of equivalence, you’ll find avatars that are re-textures of the originals, but are sold just as the texture, not the model. Will avatar re-textures be allowed to be sold if the original creator of the model’s TOS allows it, or are base models only allowed to be sold?
I believe (may be wrong) that technically you could if that’s allowed by the original avatar TOS, but you would still need to pass the seller requirements (minimum audience, etc).
This actually makes me think of a system such that: There could be a framework to do re-textures or asset addition and what not. Second Life kind of already has this because of how assets inherently work.
VRChat could make a system that is self-enforcing of creators’ ToS and what not from its inherent function. However, that would require a lot of engineering time and what not, and IDK if that’s something VRChat would see beneficial (in a business sense, unfortunately).
I still think the Avatar Marketplace is serving a niche of people that does exist, and its initial function isn’t to replace the existing functionality. So I don’t think it’s fair for people (in general) to judge it as if it is.
Of course, I still wish VRChat had better systems overall. But that’s something that we all would have to help curate over time with feedback to VRChat, or if a group of people want to make a market analysis and proposal for VRChat to make a specific system, maybe.
nop but u can’t sell ur avatars any cheaper than vrchats price. so if its 10 bucks in vrchat u cant sell it for 5 bucks on gumroad even though ud get the exact same amount of money.
As it is I can’t see the Marketplace going anywhere. Currently seems like a half-assed attempt to squeeze more money out of this platform, not something that was in development for multiple years. VRChat is unique in the fact it has no in-game avatar customization- it relies entirely on external software for avatar creation. Other platforms that use a similar ingame marketplace have ingame character customization.
I foresee a future where you can purchase an avatar in-game and then download the files for it directly from the Avatar SDK or VCC. No third party websites or in-browser downloads needed. Until then, unfortunately, the Avatar Marketplace seems like little more than a poorly managed cash grab. I’m not saying that’s what it is, but that’s what it seems to be. A lot of time and discussion has went into it that seemingly went nowhere.
The past few years have made me very worried for the future of this platform- the developers don’t seem to (or care to) understand their community at all, and there seems to be little to no communication between them and staff who actually do.