Developer Update - 22 November 2023

[tupper]

Welcome to the Developer Update for 22 November 2023!

This week’s Dev Update banner features Moonlit Wanderings by WispyWoo! Find some friends, grab a warm mug of your preferred beverage, and chill out in a forest cabin teeming with magical energy.

If you’d like to catch up, you can read our previous Developer Update from 9 November.

Important Info / Announcements

Creator Economy Open Beta is LIVE!

The VRChat Creator Economy is in OPEN BETA with our first creator support feature: Paid Subscriptions!

Check out the blog post here! or, if you’re a video kinda person, check out this Video Dev Update, featuring Strasz! woah, nice new avatar (shoutouts to mari!)

Introducing Paid Subscriptions | Dev Update

Terms of Service and Privacy Policy Changes!

With the release of CE, we also updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy! Here, we’ll go over some (but not all!) changes we’ve made in a more readable manner than a big ol’ legal document.

Terms of Service Changes

You can see the full Terms of Service here, as usual.

Many changes were made to the Terms of Service in duty to enabling the Creator Economy. We have further terms in another document, visible here. Together, the Terms of Service and the Creator Economy Program Rules enable us to provide you with Creator Economy services, and lays out the rules of that system.

As far as other changes, Section 13.4 of the Terms of Service states that we monitor activity on VRChat (server logs, Recent Worlds, Recent Avatars, analytics, etc), but also that we may make audio and video recordings of VRChat. These recordings may be made in an automated manner to maintain the security and integrity of the Platform, or may be done to investigate a violation of the Terms, or of a law. This section was added to account for future systems where moderation and reporting systems require this data to operate, such as (for example) an audio/video buffer included with a moderation report.

Privacy Policy Changes

You can check out the full text here. Our changes are effective November 22, 2023.

Most of the changes involve restructuring and re-writing existing sections to make them easier for you to understand. Some additional notable changes are:

• We moved our California Resident Privacy Notice to a new page, here. The new page includes disclosures required under California law as well as details about the rights available to California residents regarding their personal information under the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020.
• We describe our collection of information about the movement of your body and eyes if certain in-platform features are enabled. This covers features like Full Body Tracking and Eye Tracking.
• We describe situations in which we will use and share your information if you engage with the VRChat Creator Economy.
• We provide additional details about how we use your personal information.
• We provide additional details about situations in which you direct us to share your personal information, such as when you use the Open Sound Control protocol (“OSC”) to connect to third-party devices and services.
• We elaborate on the rights available to users in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Brazil regarding their personal information.
• We talk about how we use your personal information to enforce the Terms of Service. We talk about using artificial intelligence (AI) in particular. This is in reference to image scanning technology we use to analyze user-uploaded images for Terms of Service violations such as hateful imagery.

We value transparency and hope this update allows you to better understand our privacy practices.

2023.4.2 Open Beta

The VRChat Open Beta is currently up with lots of changes, including the Creator Economy! Hop into our Discord, grab the Open Beta channels and roles, and read up on the latest announcements.

Here’s some features and improvements we’re dropping with 2023.4.2:

• Content Gating filtering is in, which allows you to filter content based on how its labeled
  • It’s off by default for everyone 18 or older, and forced on for everyone 13-17.
  • … except for “Extreme Horror” because I don’t think we defined that tag very well and people are over-applying it
• Impostors are in, providing a perfectly unsuspicious way to have your avatar show to everyone, even if they’re not on a platform you built for
  • You can generate an impostor manually on the VRChat Home right now! Go to Avatars on the left, click on an avatar, click Generate Impostors. It might take a bit, we’re under heavy demand
  • This’ll be automatic later on, and hopefully faster than 20 hour turnarounds lol
• Updated search UI, allowing for faster and more intuitive searching for content
• Improved shader features like a better Shader Fallback system, improvements to the “Standard Lite” shader, and a brand-new “Supersampled UI” shader intended for high quality mobile UIs
• Improved interactions at high speeds and with small objects. You can interact with your menu again while flying around in Test Pilots! At least, until we break it again.
• Arguably the best change in the whole release: The Quick Menu Here page no longer starts out scrolled to the bottom. whoever fixed this, hmu, i need to buy you a drink

VRChat New Years Eve Celebrations

Our submissions are still open for the VRChat New Years Eve celebrations!

Each New Years Eve, VRChat opens up the VRChat New Years Eve Square for everyone to party and ring in the new year!

While you’re enjoying each successive New Years across the world, you can also explore the New Years Square! we’ll have posters featuring various parts of the community, booths and storefronts with familiar creators, and a video stream playing the VRChat Entertainment Network, which is a pop-up video stream featuring VRChat videos created by you!

Submissions close in 9 days!

Get your video, poster, or logo in ASAP!

For more information, see this thread!

Ongoing Development

UI Focus View

The Creators team has been testing VRChat worlds on Android Mobile devices and making notes of all the ways we can improve this experience for everyone, by improving the tools available to Creators. We found that World-Space UI is one of the most difficult things to use in VRChat in its current state, designed for VR and Desktop. We identified two goals in our approach to improve this:

Goals

• Improve accessibility of existing World UI for mobile users.
• Require no setup from creators to enable, let them opt-out if they don’t want it.

Early Prototype

With the above two goals in mind, we’re designing a feature to show world-space canvases as if they were flat on your screen. Here’s an early prototype:

Features Under Consideration

Here’s the current feature list:

• Present world-space canvases in simulated screen-space, maximizing legibility and usability.
  • Calculate ideal framing based on canvas bounds, physical screen size, etc.
• Ensure interaction works as usual (select, press, copy/paste, enter text, etc).
• Enable Pan and Zoom via familiar gestures.
• Enter Focus View by pressing on a UI element - or could be press and hold?
  • Use existing interaction distance to decide whether an element can be Focused.
• Exit Focus View via screen-space Icon.
• Opt-Out of this feature via website (similar to Avatar Scaling)

Other Possible Features

We’re limiting the scope of this feature to get it out as soon as we can, here are some additional features we’ve considered for later inclusion:

• Enable on Desktop and VR.
• Catalog all canvases, allow selection via new menu (like an instruction booklet or mobile device you can pull out).
• Enable Creators to set default view parameters.
• Enable Creators to opt-out per-canvas.

This is the first item in a series of improvements the Creators team is making to bridge disparities between our platforms.

Conclusion

That’s it for this Dev Update! Woah, wait, why so SHORT??

The Creator Economy Open Beta took most of our resources these past few weeks! So, that’s where all the activity’s been!

Our next update is scheduled for 7 December, 2023. Since we’re getting ready for the holiday break, that will probably also be a fairly short update.

See you then!

[Fax]

Thanks for writing this post, @tupper !

I hope you’ll all enjoy the paid subscriptions VRChat’s creators made.

They did a great job, and I’m really proud of the worlds in the new ‘Marketplace’ tab in the open beta. Y’all should go check them out and see them for yourself!

[VoicesShiature]

@tupper

Ongoing Development

UI Focus View

The Creators team has been testing VRChat worlds on Android Mobile devices and making notes of all the ways we can improve this experience for everyone, by improving the tools available to Creators. We found that World-Space UI is one of the most difficult things to use in VRChat in its current state, designed for VR and Desktop. We identified two goals in our approach to improve this:

Goals

• Improve accessibility of existing World UI for mobile users.
• Require no setup from creators to enable, let them opt-out if they don’t want it.

Early Prototype

With the above two goals in mind, we’re designing a feature to show world-space canvases as if they were flat on your screen. Here’s an early prototype:

pretty cool UI Focus View >Android beta< + (when people want to see something they click something to focus on there Focus View)

[ChalonDavisXIII]

What do y’all plan to do to prevent this from being used to paywall avatars/worlds of already existing IPs? I’m no expert but I’d think that paywalling an avatar of an existing character from a big studio like, say, Disney, Marvel, etc. would warrant a DMCA strike. Not to mention all of the Movie worlds that allow users to watch full films for no cost.

[docteh]

I put in for an imposter a few times last night, but it silently fails. Should I get an email or anything?

[tupper]

We had a bunch fail because we were upgrading some stuff, so some failed. We’ll try to redo them, but no harm in queueing again. Should be very fast.

[docteh]

I got an error! “An unknown error occurred”

It’s possible that the avatar is too short.

Asked for the “SD” (the chibi) RadDollV2 on booth

[genesisaria]

@tupper

Terms of Service Changes

I and many many others are going to have serious issues with privacy violation via surveillance. I don’t check the terms and privacy too often, but having gone over in detail regarding changes, it essentially says “we are going to record your voice, all of your tracking data, maybe even video of everything you do regardless of if you are in private instances” . . . Essentially saying, if you are on the vrchat platform at all, they have 100% identifiable information that can be used against you. Tracking data, whether or not they actually scan your eyeballs is not overly relevant, you can still identify real people with motion tracking data.

It also says that for example EEA specifically get special permissions to request this data or to request discontinuing or opt-out of this recording data, but what about the rest of us? This sends a message that vrchat doesn’t care about privacy and want to invade everyone’s and only restrict that where the law says it has to, leaving the rest of us SoL.

I always bring up the always important quote: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety , deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” - Benjamin Franklin

We all understand the desire to prevent crime and solve issues that result in damage to individuals or the community at large, but overreaching surveillance is not the solution, it just corrupts and disrupts everyone. …These are bad precedents to set as the frontier of future intimate virtual social interactive environments. VRChat is supposed to be a role model.

An idea instead of video buffering, for example having an ingame recording that data as a short burst of tracking data and voice for a manual reporting feature, rather than automatic. If ingame, it can be verified legitimate as opposed to doctored.

[Temmie_Dola]

And also it’s not clear if the violation will count in a private instance or only in public ones

[Snowy]

Please fix the account deletion option on the website, it’s not working for me (see image attachment). I’m sure there are plenty of others who also wish to remove themselves from this trainwreck of a platform.

[dark]

My only concerns are about what data will be collected, and how the data will be collected, used, and stored. What does GDPR have to say about this?

We already know how people felt about toxmod, and this seems to be overstepping a bit more than that.

[DiaraD]

You reserve the right to monitor and record users. And as an EU citizen I have the right to be made aware how and when vrc uses or collects my personal data. How is access to this kind of information planned for the end user and how do you suggest this is technically achievable?

As of now I don’t think this is entirely legal like this in many countries.

[skyispoggers]

agreed. vrchat seems to be getting the worst from both roblox and facebook. its worrying to see them abusing their power within the industry

[kathiel]

I think Impostors are great and having the Creator Economy is awesome as an option… but where I live (which is somewhere in the EU), pretty much everything you say you’ll collect and record at random of my activities is against the law, even more so when used in supposedly private situations (which private instances would fall into in this case).
I’m gonna take a wild guess and assume most EU countries are not gonna be covered by this extensive privacy violation.

[I_dont_know_ok]

From the Vrchat privacy policy
“If you wish to access, update, delete or amend any other Personal Information we hold about you, you may contact us at https://vrch.at/support”

vrchat privacy policy > here <
more information about your question is in section 5 and for EU specifically section 5 B

[betelgeusesgirl]

this wouldnt have happend if people didnt bully people

[genesisaria]

@I_dont_know_ok

I’ve been hearing that people actually request for data, and never get responded to as well, which is a problem stacked on this. The real issue people have is that they are wording it in the sense that only certain regions get these benefits, and everyone else gets to be internet stalked by the system.

---

@betelgeusesgirl

this wouldnt have happend if people didnt bully people

Not relevant. It’s not vrchat’s job to play big brother and spy on everyone to make sure they’re acting perfectly.

[genesisaria]

… Statistically speaking, almost every human has broken some kind of minor law multiple times in their life, and most people regularly do things that are in a grey area: disproportionately increased surveillance increases the frequency of people being penalized for minor infractions and things that are not a huge issue and should be let go. It does not protect or help anyone, all it does is make average people suffer more to satisfy a systematic self patting on the back that they’re “doing a good job of making things safe”, when in reality, they’re making it less safe for the average people, because they can’t just exist without fear of making a small mistake and being heavily penalized for it. This already sort of happens, where people get ban hunted for saying something accidentally, or being falsely accused of things. Even cases i have first hand from complete disclosure of all sources of information, discovered to be in fact legally morally and ethically benign, are still treated as guilty.

Most people aren’t going to notice this, or understand why they are being penalized, some might leave, many won’t be aware of or know the details to drive to mass protest… This must be addressed in force before it spells demise for the platform long term and nobody actually realize it until it’s to late. Waiting out to see how much people will put up with for how long is such a bad angle to take on these things, and will only ultimately make a public enemy. Please work with us as a partner, not as an adversary.

Leave moderation reactive, do not make it heavily proactive. The line should be drawn at stuff like uploaded CSAM to banners and icons (ie image sniffing systems), though this barely ever happens to begin with so it’s mostly unnecessary. People report stuff like that fast, that’s enough.

[rtyog84]

For the creator economy, are there trying to handle it with other payment methods?
30% on Steam or other platforms is pretty high, but some people aren’t happy with it.

And I don’t know how much longer the official Udon2 is going to be developed, the current situation of udon is really urgent, there are a lot of small problems.

---

There are many strange new bugs that always appear with version updates.
Moreover, the dynamic type of udon makes the error breakpoint reported by the VM incorrect, which causes the error to spread when the wrong type is added and makes debugging more difficult.

---

I hope that in the future we can develop official libs or personal libs to better handle udon sharp and reduce the use of udon node graph.

For developers, there are still a lot of problems to be solved, although I personally feel that the official cares about the end-users first.

[TXV123]

The creator economy is truly by far, the worst idea for a system for VRChat. Even worse than the “Security” update when it first came out. This system could easily be abused by putting paywalls all over one’s world. I don’t even see how this could benefit the platform at all, you already have VRChat Plus, why make a creator economy system with a 50/50 split when it just makes it seem like you and your team is trying to squeeze as much money as you can out of your platform, and that’s no good. This will just harm your platform even more, it’s like you’re trying to make your platform a clone of roblox or rec room with the in-game currency. This genuinely makes me want to consider discontinuing development of worlds I’ve put passion into and probably even quit VRChat all together, and it truly saddens me how you’re going down a corporate route and not considering making your platform actually better with the lack of moderation, quality control, and even consideration for the community that actually cares about your platform. The economy system would also hurt worlds of existing IPs made by fans of said IPs, probably even if they’re not doing it for economic or financial reasons at all. If you do set the creator economy system live, it will devastate your platform and most likely cause it to enter a true dark age.

So please, I sincerely mean this to the developer team of VRChat, don’t go down a corporate route and do away with the creator economy all together and make your platform a better place.