Hi, new to the boards but have almost 700 hours in VRChat (which I’ll just refer to henceforth as VRC since it’s easier) as of typing this. I’ve been reading the blog updates since phys bones dropped and I’m even starting to create worlds and avis soon TM. I say all this just to preface this post with the fact that I care a lot about VRC. I haven’t even had my Index for a full year at this point (played as early as 2019 on Desktop), but I would be lying if I didn’t say this game was a huge part of my life now. I met so many people I would now consider my family through this game, so I really do want to see it flourish and be the best version of itself it can be.
So, with all that said, please at least delay the EAC update. I’m no expert on anti-cheat solutions, but I do love modding. I’ve modded games, consoles, phones, and more, and I know for a fact that EAC won’t stop mods, just delay them at best and add an unnecessary level of risk to running them. At the very least, how I personally view mods, is that they’re a labor of love from the community. They are there to enhance their experience so that they can continue to use the product that they love. They add new things the developers might not have even thought people would want, they can be as broad or hyper-specific as the community wants, and to top it all off the devs don’t have to worry about implementing these features ASAP since they technically do exist. They can take their time to prioritize more prominent things while the community can handle the finer details until they have the time and resources to tackle them themselves. Mods have lots of unique benefits that I think the dev team is either overlooking or undervaluing. It is literally impossible for them to implement every feature the community requests, but with mods, it takes a lot of the load off of them.
And yes, malicious client mods do exist, I won’t just pretend everyone uses mods just to make their game run smoother, but as far as I’m aware, most malicious features are actually through avatars rather than clients. A good example would be crashers. Crashers, as far as I know, typically have the crashing functionality on their avatars, and other than for performance reasons, this is probably a big reason people hide most avatars from people of lower trust ranks and people who aren’t friends. In fact, I know lots of people who only use mods that counter-act these crashing avatars, and by removing mods, there is a very real chance that crashers will become an even bigger issue and render EAC pointless.
In conclusion, I think this update wasn’t created from a point of malice, the exact opposite actually. I think the dev team is truly trying their hardest to do what is right. Adding highly modded in features is a good thing to strive for and trying to increase the protection of the player base at large without needing 3rd party software or modifications is something any software should strive for IMHO. However, they’re simply just going about this the wrong way. EAC won’t fix what I, and potentially many others, believe to be the biggest issues with this game, and while mods are against technically TOS, it is undeniable that there are mods that greatly increase user experience, performance, and many more things that would take a team of this size months to years to only add a fraction of what users already have today. Please reallocate your attention and development time to something else instead of removing mods from the game, because removing mods can only do so much good in my eyes. I won’t be leaving anytime soon, unless everyone else I know up and leaves this game as well, but I don’t want the player numbers to dwindle because of something that is so easily avoidable. And I hope that with you guys listening to mod developers (as stated in the blog post), that also means you will listen to the many people in the community who disagree with this decision, and not just the seemingly very few who do agree.
Oh, and thanks for creating this game. It has literally saved lives, and I’ve met my current partner through it. Like I said earlier, it means so much to me. I would never want to see this game die any time soon. So keep up the good work! Even if there are a few missteps and mistakes along the way, we’re all human.