Except that you shut down third party uploaders such as Third3D and only just recently updated the terms to bar such systems. I’ve had my own plans for an uploader over two years ago, I inquired support about whether it’s acceptable and took over a month to receive a template “read the terms yourself” reply, despite nothing directly contradicting it at the time I dropped it because of the ambiguity, fast forward two years and I was right, instead of working with the community you’re once again working against it.
I get that you’re trying to make money, if your solution is good enough or better than the alternatives, it will, but you’re actively shutting down or barring us from steering users towards (potentially) better options (entirely depends on the user and their needs, informing them of other options is ethical imo, even when it’s simply for a cheaper price, not everyone has the same purchasing power or disposable income).
Just about every avatar on Third3D is not suitable for this new platform for one reason or another, and it also usually accompanied source files instead of replacing them, providing users with near “instant” access, to the extent that community tools can.
So what are avatar variants, and how will they work? They’re mentioned very briefly in the documents twice but don’t actually give any details.
My biggest concern right now with this system is customization. Customization is extremely limited by the performance rank system. Having multiple high-quality texture options, or clothing/hair/etc options with multiple skinned meshes quickly raises the performance rank. If I’m going to need to list these options as separate avatars, it would be bad to have to charge for each option separately. So, if avatar variants are a separate way to add customization options I would really appreciate more details on that.
I have plenty of other concerns that I may ask about later, but want to ask about this one separately first.
Edit: Reading through the replies and there was another mentions of variants, but would still love more details on how the system works. Like I assume these will have to be separate avatar uploads that each have to be approved? Will they be displayed in the listing for the avatar so you can see what they all look like? How are they selected/used?
You shut down Third, a useful and SO MUCH NEEDED tool that the community needed and harmed no one just to promote this greedy cash grab
You ban basic nsfw avatar features KNOWING DAMN WELL that the majority of the community has, even your own community manager.
You do not disclose up front what % are you going to steal from creators and I am completely sure you will be taking 50% from our hard work
Your vision is a wholesome family friendly corpo sanitized game with low poly cartoon SFW avatars that WILL KILL THE GAME until it looks like Meta’s Horizon Worlds
You are insanely out of touch with the community, which has been doing ALL THE WORK to bring vrchat where it is today, the people who have built your game FOR FREE while you sucked up all the rewards for your own pockets
I agree, there was no need to C&D Third. It was just a replacement for Unity, it wouldn’t eat into the Avatar Marketplace profits at all.
For me as user, before this I had 2 options:
- Find a free public avatar (I can’t control the assets).
- Buy or commission outside and upload it to Unity (I can control the assets).
Now I have one more:
- Find a paid avatar (I can’t control the assets).
So it has the disadvantages of the 1, and the disadvantages of the 2…
I can’t control the assets, but isn’t free… Why someone would buy that?
In VRchat’s defense, the reason Third got shut down was because it required you to input your VRchat login information.
The ideal solution here would be for VRchat to implement an “Upload Key” that you could generate and then hand to someone (e.g. a commissioner) to give them temporary upload access to your account without actually forking over login info. Theoretically, if that existed and Third used it, then there wouldn’t have been a problem. We should be advocating for that to be implemented.
Sites like Vket Avatar Maker and Readyplayerme have special contracts with VRchat that circumvent this.
I never used Third but I’m guessing it was a web-based Unity alternative, which does sound like something that’d be useful.
VRCX also asks for your vrchat login info and nobody has had a problem with it all these years. Both were open source
The fact that it is explicitly against the rules for a listing to mention that an external market offers source files is a hugely terrible move, imo. The model of selling a cheaper, wear only version of an avatar through the official marketplace while also offering a more premium, unity ready version on a third party platform is pretty appealing, but if I can’t be transparent and tell users that the other option exists it just feels misleading.
VRChat has an OAuth solution, you’ve used it to log into these forums or other child-sites that aren’t part of the main site, they’ve simply never made it available for the community to use.
That’s… a really good point that I hadn’t considered. My gut assumption is that the major difference between VRCX and Third is that VRCX is running locally on your computer and doesn’t send your login credentials to a third party system like Third would have to. Your login doesn’t leave your computer unless it’s communicating with specifically VRChat’s official API(s).
I know Furality also uses this system, so my assumption is only VRchat and its verified Partners (e.g. Virtual Market) can use it. I still think that in the case of avatar uploading, though, a temporary upload access key would be the best solution.
You may not believe it, but there are people out there who don’t want to do things that are messy, but want to pay their creators fairly. This is a system for them, just not for you.
(And, this place is “for Sellers”)
Third didn’t do that, it used the built avatar bundle to upload the avatar from your system, the login to VRChat and the use of the session it granted was completely on your machine, it never shared your credentials or session tokens.
How many avatar variants can appear in a single listing?
In Listings | VRChat Creation it first says “Each listing can contain 1-15 products”, and then later says “Add Products: Choose 1 to 10 products.”
What is the minimum/maximum (depending on how you look at it) performance ranking sellers will be allowed to have on their avatars?
That’s not what that rule says. It says you shouldn’t “encourage users to purchase content on another platform”. Ignoring the first part of that sentence is disingenuous. That rule is to prevent people from using this storefront as basically free-advertising and then saying “hey, go here for a better deal!”.
It doesn’t say you aren’t allowed to link to external access for the source files. Staff already said in this very thread you could. They obviously just don’t want a situation being created where the market-place is abused with people frequently encouraging people to head to a third party site.
Ok, no users opinions here…
They need to clarify the difference in what can and can be said. Like, if you just said “this avatar is also available on Gumroad”, does that break the rules or no?
Fair enough. I never used Third, I didn’t hear about it til it got shut down. Also not finding a lot of info on it online.
But yes generally I agree that third party solutions like Third should be allowed to coexist with the official marketplace. I don’t remember if I made a canny post for a temporary upload key, but if I didn’t, I’ll make one, cause then Third could just use that and be totally fine.
Edit: Avatar Upload Access Tokens | Voters | VRChat
Canny post from 2019… Sigh.
Just posting here to say that we will be going through and answering questions, as we can. Right now, we’re compiling feedback to bring back to the team (and to get solid answers for folks). This takes a bit of time, though, so please don’t think we’re ignoring y’all.
Thanks for your patience!
The rules are written very clearly. Telling users why they might want to buy from another platform instead of VRChat is prohibited. Source files are the one thing that this system is missing, and the main reason a buyer would want to go elsewhere but VRChat specifically list it in the example of what you can’t mention. How would you say that there are source files for sale on another platform without it being an ‘encouragement’ for some buyers to go there instead?