vrchat security update ramblings from connie

Having had a few weeks to continue to monitor what VRchat is doing (new beta features, dismissive attitudes/bannings in their Discord server, job postings about building an in-game marketplace possibly with cryptocurrency) I can say with confidence that VRchat's implementation of EAC and banning of mods is a profit-motivated decision. Every supposed security benefit they're mentioned is complete hogwash.

It's starting with limiting functionality to only what they offer (so they can charge for future functionality; never forget that the only practical benefit of VRC+ was additional favorite avatar slots... which mods did first!) but is eventually going to extend to content as well. They aren't getting to get their beaks wet on avatar sales coming from Gumroad, after all.

(That's going to become an IP disaster too, I reckon. You already know companies like Disney are seething at seeing assets of theirs run around in VRChat, and now, you're going to be able to spend money on those assets *in-game* if someone uploads them and attaches a VRC Fun Bucks price to 'em?)

Anyways...

I think this being the reason behind everything they're doing is why it all stings so bad for this particular crowd of queer neurodivergent furries, you know? We live in a world so tainted by capitalism that it makes crossing distances to see each other extremely expensive, exhausting, and as-of-2020, unsafe.

And here comes this funky little program called VRChat that lets us all transport ourselves to these fantastic virtual spaces, and be in affirming bodies as we do so, bridging the gap of real-world distance. It was a unifying way to escape and to have a sense of physical community that we're all so robbed of...

... but it wasn't perfect - the program was pretty jank, right? Ran very badly and was missing tons of basic accessibility features that had been requested for and ignored for years and years. So, mods! Mods helped the game run better and smoothed over those accessibility issues, and we could just focus on having a good time - right up until the Security Update. And that's the real reason why the Security Update stings so bad, I think: It's a reminder that no, even this little niche we thought we were carving out for ourselves can't not have capitalism's prime directive of Endless Growth seep into it. Nothing can. It felt like we had this hidden, secret space away from it all, but now the Eye of Sauron has seen it and will claim it like it's claimed everything else.

I've seen a lot of hurt come out of this. It hurt me too. Everyone's processing and reacting to it in different ways. There's a lot of talk of "what do we do now?" Some people want to stay on VRC because getting set up there was already an enormous deal of effort, and it's still the largest platform. Some people want everyone to all move to a particular competitor platform. Some people have the time and energy to dabble in all of them as-needed, some don't.

In the past couple of days, I've started to see people begin to get toxic to each other about the question of "what do we do now?", and I feel like that toxicity is being misplaced because we can't actually turn our anger and hurt towards the developer's shitty decisions and get anything but silence back. All I can do is urge people to remember that we're all in this together and that it's the forces of capitalism forcing our hands to make these kinds of hard decisions in the first place. This is none of our faults. Be kind and patient. VRChat was hardly perfect before, after all, and was still full of compromises as a piece of software, but we made it work because we cared about each other. Continue to show that care.

For my part, I'll do whatever it takes to stay close to all of you going forward. VRChat was, is, and now even moreso, a jank and busted piece of software, but the friendship and sense of community *you* all gave me in it changed my life for the better. I love you. Be good.