We released the Creator Economy in 2023, and it’s been working really well for world creators! Most users don’t want to close VRChat and open a website to support creators - top creators earn 4x more in the Creator Economy than they did on Patreon. We hope we can help avatar creators find similar levels of success!
I’ve been mulling over this system and my general conclusion is in its current form it’s very likely it won’t hit the target market like how things worked out for world creators so it’s not worth me attempting to sign up.
If the Marketplace is filled with products that are available elsewhere then chances are they will have a licence that allows them to be available in VRC as a public, unlike with worlds and Patreon that puts them on the same level of access as the marketplace and at that point it’s a matter of if your target audience thinks the store and prices are more convenient then just using a search world or, if those end up banned, outright searching for the avatar world by world.
There’s a real possibility that even if there is an item exclusive to the store the target audience won’t buy it simply because they wrongly assume they haven’t found it for free yet.
The products on the store collectively need to have value above what’s available for free. Yes one way would be providing source files for peace of mind even if the target audience is never going to use them (like how the console market provides physical copies of digital games) but any other method to provide value could also make a difference.
If I were to give a suggestion that everyone and myself will hate me for it would be to make some system exclusive to marketplace avatars, something like a universal accessory attachment point system so then we can sell avatars and have another store to sell hats.