Pretty sure it’s supposed to specify that case, as in “we may record your data when a user report is filed and it’s used for moderation purposes only.” The current wording just says that recording will happen, and could happen anywhere anytime and may or may not have a specified purpose, because it’s not worded concisely for it’s exact use and extent thereof.
2 Likes
Forgive me, maybe we’re referring to different things? 13.4 pretty clearly lays out when/why monitoring occurs
… (a) in an automated manner to maintain the security and integrity of the Platform; (b) if we reasonably believe such monitoring is necessary to investigate a violation of the Terms or applicable law; or (c) if we are otherwise required to do so by applicable law.
That doesn’t specify extent; is that something is listening to voice 24/7 and is accessible at any time, and/or a bot is logging keywords to send alarm bells to big brother at all times? Or is that just a small buffer that is sent as a packet at a report time. People wouldn’t have much issues with the latter, but the former is dystopic. There’s no context, just an excuse that “we’re doing it for your safety, honest.”
Also the distinction between how the data is being recorded; direct private recordings are personal; bulk statistical data sheets are not particularly identifiable (which makes vrchat recording different from say meta or google recording/selling). Where and how much and for how long it’s being stored, is all necessary.
2 Likes
By “former” do you mean section (a)? There’s three sections so “former” and “latter” lose a bit of meaning 
The intent there is to leave the door open for things like automatic voice moderation. We’ve explored that in the past and will explore it again in the future. Personally I’d love to have automated voice moderation enabled in public instances – people who go to publics on a regular basis will know the benefits to be gained there
All of the info on how data is being recorded, stored, etc is in the privacy policy! I don’t know it off the top of my head
Forgive me if I knock off after this point, again, sick so the antihistamines are getting to me, and I gotta chuck a turkey in the oven at some point
The terms said that this recording stuff would apply to private instances as well… some kind of voice mod in public only is perfectly acceptable to most. It’s the invasion of non-public instances that everyone has issue with.
13.4. Monitoring to these Terms. VRChat reserves the right to monitor your use of the Platform (whether or not you are in a private world, location or setting within the Platform)
There is zero clear specification and layman understandable terms that make it unmistakably clear the exact use cases of said monitoring, when and where; just a lot of loopholes that essentially internally claim the freedom to record however it likes.
And as far as VRChat needing to be a role model; legal terms for rights haven’t caught up with virtual spaces like metaverses, so stuff like virtual body rights aren’t here yet, but frankly they ought to be considered proactively. There’s a reason stores can’t record you in bathrooms or changerooms, why should vrchat think it should be able to in the virtual analogue?
Private worlds should be treated as non-public the same way non-public spaces irl are; even if the law isn’t concrete on this requirement due to the platform itself being openly accessible, it probably will be in the future when law catches up.
6 Likes
I should add that people don’t like the trend of big announcements being dropped right before holidays, so the staff can run off and have an excuse to not deal with the immediate reactions of said changes. Not trying to be asinine or point fingers, it’s just happened a lot, and it’s not really fair. Right after these announcements is when the most important feedback happens, not after the dust settles and people get into the “well the world sucks i guess” mentality.
4 Likes
is this a trend? have we done this before? I’m genuinely curious
The timing isn’t super great but sometimes it’s how it works out. It isn’t like we’re completely clocked out. I get to decide my own schedule but I have had to tell some others working on CE (lookin’ at you, fax!!!) who need to take a few days off after this sprint to open beta to knock it off and let it cook a bit.
As I said, I’m reading every single post made, watching every QRT, and listening to every Twitter space. we’re not blind, deaf, or dumb, but we would like a few seconds to catch our breath, lol
Not every post will get a response, though, so maybe that’s what you mean. definitely not immediate responses, either. if we responded to every single post we’d need about a 20x larger comms team
5 Likes
-Sorry for walltext but I need to quote EULA
I’m not a lawyer either-although i got buds who are- but…
Is all of it really standard stuffs and applicable to all coiuntries involved?
I might check other vr social platforms out and see the diffs between diff services.
these changes are not clean enough for some current world standards.
Doesnt sound a safe and kind place with this EULA. more like a place where people are being sold. It’s just too much.
VR chat is not a shooting game or a MOBA, nor twitter either, its a vr social platform with complete use of voice and body communication. There is Big differences. Some people spend all their free time on it, and irl conversations happens a lot.
In-Platform Communications. When using the Platform, including participation in different “worlds” or “instances,” you may disclose Personal Information to us and to other users of the Platform. This may occur when you engage in conversations, chats, or other user-to-user interactions. We may collect and use this information to the extent permitted by law.*
When accessing the Platform through a VR Client, we may collect information about the physical movements of your fingers, hands, head, and other parts of your body depending on the equipment that you use. Please note that we will only receive Movement Information from devices or services that you choose to use or enable in conjunction with the Platform.
We may receive Personal Information about you from third parties such as analytics services, vendors providing additional information on your IP address (for example, approximate location), gaming infrastructure and platform providers, social networks, and advertisers. Such additional information includes additional IP address information, information about your device, and connected social media account details. We may combine this information with other Personal Information we have about you.
I don’t understand why a complete ID profile is needed, especially since it says Vr chat sells our data. It is actually extremely nasty with children involved.
We work with third-party service providers who provide Platform security, website development, application development, hosting, payment, maintenance, marketing, advertising, and other services in connection with the Platform. We allow some of these third parties to access and process your Personal Information if doing so is necessary for them to provide us (or you) with their services…
We need a full list to such third parties, by law, since the privacy is apparantly none in this Eula.
Merger, Sale, or Other Asset Transfers*.** Personal Information may be disclosed and otherwise transferred to an acquirer, successor, or assignee as part of any merger, acquisition, debt financing, sale of assets, or similar transaction, or in the event of an insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership in which Personal Information is transferred to one or more third parties as one of our business assets. Where required by applicable law, you will be informed of such disclosure and we will obtain your consent*
This one sounds also pretty nasty, depending on who is the acquirer… and it says we can’t get our rights on it. “We will”
as for EU user privacy rights… they’re really not there. these things should be done before agreeing to the current EULA. I wonder how much time we will actually be able to talk about it in support, and get our rights back so we can use the platform without being numbers to be sold.
I am sorry, but this is too much. Idk whats happening.
1 Like
It’s been a while since i’ve paid attention to specific examples, but i remember this happened couple times way back in ye old 2018 with the ranking/privacy systems, and since then there haven’t been many drastic changes that would turn over the culture/environment/morality of the platform, besides like EAC. I’d have to go back and go over dates and stuff to be sure, but it’s an impression that i and others i’ve talked to have gotten.
1 Like
Wouldn’t be easier for players if there was a world menu handy in the vrc quick menu? And put a world menu button handy in top of the quick menu button?
So world creators can put all their world menu options in there, in fact, this could be implemented on Quest and PC version?
I can’t recall when they showed it off, but the current intent is for there to be a tab in the quick menu that is for the world
Udon ui?
I hope you will clarify how this audio/video recording and monitoring works exactly. What is ”automated manner” in ”(a) in an automated manner to maintain the security and integrity of the Platform”?
Does any of this mean that at any moment you can be unknowingly watched and recorded even when someone isn’t heinous? Please tell me I don’t have worry about having people see me in special and vulnerable moments in private. Also wonder who and how many can do it, imagine if someone uses it for their own messed up reason. Would be so disturbing and not knowing gives me anxiety…
The economy feature also worried me, but I think there wont be enough people abusing it or using it on both ends for it to be a problem. Have to wait and see. I wrote a longer comment under the Youtube video. There’s a big divide in reactions to the news for sure.
2 Likes
If ”automatic voice moderation” is what I think it is then that does not bode well.
1 Like
Hello, I’m the one who has the dream of becoming a game developer. About this Term of Service and Privacy Policy, how much VRChat operators can learn about personal information
I understood well that they were ignorant. If you know what’s important to your personal information, you won’t do this.
This is a clear breach of privacy and I think it’s the operating system of communism in China.This will also be a problem for privacy laws.
You said you monitor players who violated the rules. Whether this is a reported player. Or are you going to monitor until someone who violates the rules comes out. There is no distinction. It is also against the law to monitor in the first place.
And he said he would monitor and collect it.
This is also problematic.
I don’t know why you did this.
You’re trying to catch a player who violates the rules
I’ll understand. But it’s too extreme.
All the other players are afraid of this
I have it. I’ve seen some people say they’ll file a lawsuit.
Please withdraw this right now.
This is wrong.
1 Like
Yeah if there’s a 24/7 automated ai that’s monitoring a 24/7 buffer of audio and potentially video as well, how is this any different from social credit surveillance?
Current terms do not isolate the use case, and very clearly imply the willingness to build a system which could automatically detect and penalize people at any time. At the very minimum the terms need to be reworded to demonstrate self-restraint in this use case or we ahve a very big problem on our hands.
I should emphasize that implementing monitoring systems is nothing like the case of EAC. EAC people were protesting against a legal and established system that does not invade your privacy; that was an opinion factor on the poor choice, it’s not an ethical dilemma.
2 Likes
I just thought of another scenario: what if people were to abuse automated user report recording, and do stuff, like back people into corners and make them say self-incriminating things so that the report makes them look guilty in said recordings, even if they are in fact innocent. Gotta be honest, vrchat is very full of submissive and vulnerable people who could easily be manipulated into such falsehoods.
1 Like
When they were already engaged in foveal rendering, they even showed a video with a working version. Where is this project now?
1 Like
To be honest, only 50% to creators could be a big dealbreaker for creators. I would say up to 10% is “normal”, maybe 10% for the payment provider and 10% for VRChat, but 50%… The distribution does not even seem fair, neither for the creators, nor VRChat itself… I’m not even mad at you, i’m mad at the platform(s) at this point
Can you provide any insight on why you don’t just plan to support payments on the website? In addition, the payment inside VR has been a huge pain for me personally so far. It never worked for me, so i had to use the API directly in my Browser to be able to pay. If you would start doing payments on the website, you can also gain 30% more margin or support the creators more (or both) 
Regarding the technical problem: I am unable to buy stuff whilst in SteamVR, i think it is a bug in SteamVR. But regardless, i can just “try another browser” if it doesn’t work, i cannot “try another SteamVR”.
Hey all! I’ll put this post in here to answer the questions I’ve been seeing so far regarding the legal and terms changes.
Please be aware that the Terms and the Privacy Policy are the end-all documents here. I am not the authority on legal documents and Terms – the documents themselves are. As such, I may fuzz details or even make errors. If I do make an error, I’ll correct it and note it.
Are you recording everyone’s voice and a video of them right now?
No, we aren’t. Right now, we don’t record any video from you.
For completion’s sake, there is a demo booth in the NYE2023 world that used a special AVPro script to make a video for you. That’s recorded locally though, and is not transmitted.
Your voice is only recorded so it can be sent to others. After its received, it’s discarded.
What’s with the eye tracking data? Movement data?
We have to use your eye tracking data to animate your avatar’s eyes, and movement data to move your avatar.
Section 10 of the Privacy Policy covers this:
We only use your Movement Information and Eye Movement Information to animate your avatar in real time. We do not store records of this information.
Are you going to record everyone’s voice or record video for moderation purposes?
Not en masse. That’s what these changes are about. We may record video/audio in some limited situations.
For example, we’re improving our report systems and setting up to (eventually!) implement a audio and video buffer that sends with a user report. This report would then be viewed and acted upon by a human. This is very helpful because right now, in-app reports have zero context. They’re really hard to action. Other similar platforms have done this and reported great success with this system.
We’re also considering running some kind of automatic voice moderation or detection system in public instances and Group public instances. As anyone who goes to Publics knows, they have a toxicity problem. Again, we’ve seen other games implement systems like this and it’s been impactful. This type of system is what we mean by the “automated system”, btw. We’d mostly want it to target hateful speech, as that’s what we’ve seen these automated systems be the most effective against.
It is neither practical nor realistic for us to record and store audio and video for everyone in VRChat. It also isn’t very useful for Trust and Safety purposes!
Will you ever record in private instances?
Maybe, but only when required. The reservations we make in the privacy policy are pretty clear.
This would only be done actively, by a Trust and Safety agent, in the pursuit of an investigation into a violation of the terms. We may also do this in cooperation with authorities (various three-letter agencies, law enforcement, etc) when required by law.
I would expect situations where this would be required to be quite rare.
Are you watching me do private stuff, talk about private things??
No. Our intent with this change is allowing us to remove the most egregious offenders in hate and/or harm to others from our platform.
We know that VRChat isn’t just a “game” or “app” to many of us. We feel that way too. People talk about private stuff, make friends, have relationships, laugh, cry, all of those things, and we don’t want to violate that space. However, we do need better tools to remove the worst offenders on the internet off our platform.
Our implementation of these systems will be made with this consideration held in mind.
Are these changes and systems compliant with GDPR / CCPA / etc?
Yes, it is! We’ve been very careful to ensure we are in compliance with these user privacy regulations.
Are you selling user data?
No. We have not and do not sell user data, per the CCPA definition of “sold”. You can always check our CCPA document, the “‘Sale’ and ‘Sharing’ of Personal Information” section covers this.
Why don’t you put all of this into the Terms and Privacy Policy?
We do when we can, but those documents must necessarily be generic in some senses. Changing them has an impact, and we try to do so as little as possible. In addition, there are certain legal and regulatory “best practices” to specificity (or generalization) that are important for us to respect.
I have other questions!
Please feel free to ask them here! Since this is in regards to a Terms of Service, there’s questions that are going to get the answer “that’s answered in the terms”.
6 Likes
Can we get some type of icon denoting if a world has a paid content and by how much? Or a filter system to hide them?
World hopping will be extremely frustrating without it.
Imagine seeing an awesome new world on the board just to have it load and get to a paywall to access it, or start enjoying the world only to find the the end half is behind the paywall and you can no longer complete it .
5 Likes