Developer Update - December 12 2024

Official Dev Updates
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Welcome to the Developer Update for December 12 – the last Developer Update of the year!

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Today’s thumbnail features Hearthwood by ~Sam.

The last Developer Update was on November 25. You can find it here.

Announcements

New Year’s Eve is Coming Fast!

VRChat NYE is almost here! The event, featuring a world filled with posters and stickers created by the community, is always a great place to hang out on NYE. Likewise, we’re bringing back the VRChat Entertainment Network – a non-stop stream of content made by YOU!

We have more content in the world (and on the stream!) than ever before this year. We can’t wait to see you there!

2024.4.2 is Out!

The latest VRChat patch, 2024.4.2, was released last Thursday! This was a big release – fitting for our last patch of the year! It contained Prints, Gift Drops, and so much more. You can see everything in the Patch Notes Video here:

Or you can just read the patch notes themselves!

Age Verification… and Updates

We also announced – and shipped the framework for – Age Verification. Age Verification is a new system that allows users to verify their age using a third-party provider, Persona.

If you’d like to know more, you can see the original video here:

…and we’d suggest you’d watch the follow-up, where we addressed some concerns here:

Finally, we have a FAQ we’ve been keeping up-to-date with questions the community has been asking about this new feature. Check it out here.

If you have questions about Age Verification, you should ask them in the FAQ thread. If you ask them here, we probably will just direct you to that post!

Creator Roadmap Updates

We also announced updates to the VRChat Creator Roadmap! You can find those updates here.

The biggest change was the announcement of Soba. Soba is the next evolution of Udon, and represents a shift from our previous “Udon 2” project.

This lead to a big discussion with the community – understandably so! Folks wanted to know why we shifted directions, so we provided a bunch of detail here.

It’s worth noting that we don’t have any additional information to share on Soba at this time, but we will in the future.

The Next Jam is Coming Soon!

Prepping for the next VRChat Jam and wondering when it might be? Look no further!

While we’re not ready to tease the details yet, our next Jam should be a World Jam in February.

Keep an eye out for more details in January as we get closer to announcing the theme!

2024 Creators Recap

We’d like to share some highlights of work we’ve done for and with Creators this year.

Featuring: Persistence • Example Central • new Camera Features • the Space Jam, Summer Music Fest Jam and Spookality • our Contribution Guide and Roadmap • new VCC features including portability, package resolving and re-installing • AI Navigation Package support and Example • Physbone Gizmo Performance Improvement • UI Focus View • Build & Test for Android & Quest • Default VRChat World Template • OnInputMethodChanged • Udon access to TextMeshPro Dropdowns, InputFields and Text Components • ClientSim support Player Avatar Scaling • Highly-Requested Udon Feature Exposure.

EDIT: forgot two things!

VRRAT PLUSH

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he’s real! Go support the Makeship campaign, only live until Dec 23!

Final Stream of the Year with Two Special Guests!

Our final Dev Stream of the year (Dec 13 at 2pm PST / 10pm UTC) will include two very special guests: Graham and Jesse (Co-Founders and CEO & CTO of VRChat respectively).

Come tune in and ask questions on Twitch!

Conclusion

That’s it for this year! Given the holidays, we’ll be taking a bit of a break from posting our usual Developer Updates.

We should be back by January 16. See you next year!

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This was a great year! Can’t wait to see what next year brings. Have a great New Years Eve, until then :o

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Great stuff! 2024 was a blast - The Creator Recap was very interesting to look at!

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A timeline on the release of Age Verification would be great!

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Lots of stuff happened this year, excited to see what next year brings!

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if the Iphone facetracking works with the vrc visemes and eyetracking will there be an update to the quest pro’s (for standalone and pcvr) facetracking to support this too?

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We’ve talked about this briefly on our last Twitch stream but the tl;dr here is:
These are basically apples and oranges. Android phones and iPhones respectively provide an API that makes it a lot easier to hook up a standard for facetracking via blendshapes. Once you start looking at VR Headsets it gets a little more wonky as everything has it’s own implementation, making it a lot harder to just add support for them.

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Me in 2017 - “VRC staff do not know their user base.”
Me in 2024 - “Im not even worried, VRC staff got this”

The best way I can describe the updates over the last few years is, absolutely fantastic! Everything after EAC has been mint. Now when staff say “We hear you” I believe it as time after time we have been treated to fun and useful updates. I even got VRC plus due to all the awesome stuff you get with it when before it didn’t feel worth it to me.

Though I have little understanding of what goes on in the background, I feel like staff are hard at work and truly have a passion for what they are doing. I see the small details in the stuff coming out that didn’t need to be there but are added to give that extra something to the product. I am also finding things are working right out of the box so i can only assume more testing is being done before an update is pushed out but I don’t know for sure.

Iv also enjoyed seeing staff interact with users more. Even though I know it can be crummy to do so sometimes, It is nice to see staff take that initiative. (But also look after your mental health.)

But to end this off, Im happy with VRC and what Staff are doing to keep it fresh and fun. I hope all of you have a good holiday and I look forward to what you guys cook up next year.

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Persistence Is probably the best thing this year (having 30 hours in World of the Souls)
3 things I want to see in 2025
1 permission system for avatars, (I want to share an avatar with a friend without some random person having it within a day and it ends up in a search world.)
2 Phys Bones for worlds?
3 updates to the old toon quest shaders, literally the lowest effort way to make the quest content look better even things like having access to mutable UV would add so much utility.

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It’s been a pretty decent year, as always, lots of ups and downs.

I really wish people would make sure they understand that VRC adding age verification, while noble sounding, actually puts the ‘game’ into a very precarious position, where both Meta and Steam are now within their reasonable conditions to deplatform VRChat for violating code of conduct if they choose to decide that it counts as validating the presence of adult content and spaces, which are not permissible on Meta store, and must be appropriately tagged on Steam store.

VRChat wants to keep advertising itself as an all-ages 13+ platform, but this public image is dishonest, and adding age verification this late in the game almost seems like a desperate gamble on the part of vrchat, if not foolish.

I’ve for a very long time been explaining to people why vrchat adding age verification is quite dangerous in the business sense, even if it does come off as a morally productive move, and how vrchat has been stuck between a rock and a hard place, of needing to cater to the large audience for numbers and business value but at the same time cannot effectively control it’s unrelenting generated and socially constructed adult content that pervades the platform, which makes it a very problematic mixing pot of ages in precarious contexts because of the dichotomy between it’s outward image and it’s inward real experience.

I love VRChat dearly, and really really want it to do well, but this situation is the most scary thus far, because it could very decisively put the platform’s future in jeopardy.

I wish everyone well over the holidays, and i wish for vrchat to survive this, or find a different approach to improve the situation overall.

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Yea, especially on steam i think they have to tag the game as at least 16+ after adding the Age Verification (pretty much in the same park as other platforms that use this system (aside from Roblox which keeps getting more and more in trouble due to it).

Upping the tagged age will not cause the userbase to shrink and will definitely not scare investors away due to discrepancies between what is advertised and what is in-game.

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:3 cute plush chunky

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The sooner, the better. I would also like to know when can one expect it.

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this echoes my thoughts, and is wonderfully written. thank you

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Outstanding work, VRChat team!

Your dedication and relentless effort to push VRChat forward are nothing short of phenomenal. I’ve got your backs every step of the way, and I’ll keep supporting you all as you take this platform to new heights.

To everyone out there—enjoy the ride!

Yours truly,
newelol

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Thank you! Merry christmas!

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