Welcome to the Developer Update for July 30, 2026.
Today’s featured world is Wistful by Lilly the cat.
Announcements
Big Things Coming
Did you hear that? It’s the sound of that one friend who DJs telling you to get excited. About what? Who knows. But keep your eyes peeled for something special around August’s lunar eclipse…
2026.3.1 is in Open Beta!
Yep – it’s true. If you’ve been paying attention to the open-beta-announcements channel in our Discord, then you’ve likely seen a very active beta cycle.
If not – let’s get you caught up!
2026.3.1 introduces three big changes: new Nameplates, new User Profiles, and Profile Decorations.
User Profile
Not that long ago, we updated the User Profile on the VRChat website. This change to the client brings it in-line with those stylistic changes. If you’ve seen what the website looks like, none of this should come as a surprise!
This design should make everything in the profile a lot more readable at a glance.
Old:
New:
Name Plates
Our goal has been to try to reorganize a lot of the information that was presented by the previous nameplate, while also modernizing the design and providing additional customization options.
To that end, you’ll notice the User Profile Icon is now always visible. That’s because it’s no longer a VRC+ feature – now everyone can have an icon. For now, those without VRC+ will be limited to using the in-game camera to create an icon.
Old:
(Closed)
(Open)
New:
(Closed)
(Open)
Profile Decorations
Alongside the redesign, we’re offering users the opportunity to customize their Nameplate, Icon, and Bio in a brand new way: with Profile Decorations!
These are animated! And cool. And we’re giving you two sets of them if you participate in the Open Beta: Reference Cube, Teal and Purple.
(In my Profile above, you can see I’m using the Purple version, because of course I am.)
To acquire said Reference Cube Decoration Sets, you’ll have to pick them up from the Shop. They’re free – grab them! Only Beta users will see them, though. Also, you can equip them via your Profile!
What’s Next?
As I noted at the beginning, we’ve received a ton of feedback. That was expected! We’ve been incorporating as much of it as we can, addressing some of the biggest concerns as we go.
However, we wanted to call one one specific point of feedback:
Group Nameplate Banners.
We will be introducing a new image slot to the Group management system on the website: Group Nameplate Banner.
This image will be separate from your current banner and used exclusively for your Group’s Nameplate. If you do not have a Group Nameplate banner uploaded, we will fall back to using your existing Group Banner.
While going through this upload flow, you will be presented with a template that will help guide you to make your Group Nameplate look exactly like you’d want it to!
Group Nameplate Banners will have two cropping modes: Bottom-left Anchored and Centered. Here’s a quick explanation for each mode:
- Bottom-left Anchored: This mode will anchor the bottom left corner of your image to the bottom left corner of your Group Nameplate Banner. When the Nameplate grows, it will reveal more of your image, but it will not change how the image is scaled. This should result in an ultra-consistent Nameplate layout for those who want one, regardless of username length.
- Centered: This mode will make sure that your image covers the entire Group Nameplate Banner. The template will flag a center line square that will always be visible, but the image will scale based on the nameplate length so it will grow and shrink depending on the user’s setup. This will allow you to create a focal point on your group nameplate banner that is always visible, while also allowing you to add visual flare that might be cut off, depending on the nameplate size. This should be close to how they used to work, but markedly more consistent.
But That’s Not All!
In addition to that, there are some changes that we’ve planned that will take a little more time. These won’t be released day one, but will come shortly after launch.
This includes:
- More Nameplate Banner Customization: We’re going to add in the ability to upload custom nameplate banners individually – even if you aren’t in a Group. We want to give you options.
- Individual Decoration Purchases: We’re going to give users the ability to buy individual Profile Decorations, instead of having to buy everything in the bundle. At launch, they’ll still be bundles, but we’ll be adding this functionality shortly. This way, you’ll be able to mix and match whatever ones you’d like.
…and more. Probably!
It’s hard to get this sort of thing right – everyone has different preferences and needs, but we’re listening to your feedback and iterating where it makes sense. Thank you so much for being patient with us, as well as providing tons of helpful feedback. We appreciate everyone in the open beta actively testing and helping us refine these new changes!
Speaking of Feedback…
In the last Dev Update, we talked about cleaning up the Action Menu, alongside making it use your UI theme.
Your feedback was very positive… with one exception!
Y’all made it clear that you really wanted to keep the microphone toggle button.
You got it! It’ll stay right where it is.
Persistence Reliability Improvements & Intermittent Saving
You walk into a forest. To your north, a babbling brook with some delicious looking bees dancing around their hive. To your west, an ear-stretching gremlin rests upon a stump.
To your east, a clearing with a small chest at its center draws your attention. As you collect your loot from the chest and make your way toward the gremlin, a startling BWAMP assaults your ears.
Alas, you’ve been disconnected from VRChat. But it’s okay, your loot will still be there when you come back, right? After all, you’d been grinding for the past six hours.
It’d be a real shame if something happened to it…
Tragedy strikes. It wasn’t just you. The entire realtime server blinked out of existence in an instant. It’s rare, but it happens. And all your progress from that session? Gone before it could be written more permanently.
It’s happened to many of you. It’s happened to me (MY FISH :sadcat:), and we’ve been spending some time in the background working on mitigating these sorts of failures.
Some months ago, you may have noticed a funny little window that could sometimes pop up when leaving a world, letting you know it’s trying to transmit important data before you leave.
This was a mitigation to make sure you don’t leave the world before transmitting persistence data, specifically in cases where your client was a little behind sending it to the realtime server. This could happen when a world was pushing against networking rate limits and fell behind.
You also might have had this happen when API hiccups have occurred, and we’ve started having our realtime servers try and try again to make sure that write succeeds as best they can.
Most recently, as of a few weeks ago, we rolled out mitigations for the scenario outlined at the beginning of this section: the intermittent saving of persistence data.
It’s possible that you’ve since had this issue occur, and noticed that you’ve only lost some progress, instead of all of it.
This is because now, rather than waiting until you leave to write that data to permanent storage, it does so occasionally throughout your time in the instance.
Originally, this timer was pretty conservative (once an hour or so), as we wanted to measure its impact. Right now, though, it triggers after around a half an hour. We’ll continue increasing the frequency until we land in a place we’re happy with.
And of course, we’re continuing to explore avenues to reduce the likelihood of any loss as we go along. Right now, the biggest risk is prolonged API outages that prevent our realtime servers from transmitting and saving persistence data. This is also pretty rare, but can be pretty catastrophic to any progress you’re making when it happens and you happen to leave before it’s back up!
In the worst case where you still manage to lose a bunch of progress, contacting support is still an option!
They can help you restore that data, but please keep in mind that old persistence data is only retained for a limited period of time (weeks, not months), and support may need some time to respond to your ticket.
As such, you should do so immediately after experiencing the loss!
Conclusion
That’s it! See you in two weeks on the 13th of August.
