Things went nuts this week as VRChat announced that its next update would implement Epic Games’ Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) technology, which is the first of several new features aiming to make the game a better and safer place to hang out.
In other words… they are banning all user-made mods and well, people were not happy, not at all.
In the next VRChat update, we're implementing the first of several new features focused on making VRChat a better and safer place to hang out. This includes our implementation of Easy Anti-Cheat and Secure Instances. Check out our blog post to learn more. https://t.co/teKcegiRGd pic.twitter.com/v0VQJH27wN
— VRChat (@VRChat) July 25, 2022
What were they expecting?
Of course, things turned really bad, when the update landed Tuesday, with a growing fallout among its most dedicated players, some of whom are cancelling their premium subscriptions and threatening to leave for other games.
The thing is that “The Security Update,” not only affects hackers running modified VRChat software, but it also goes after everyday players using any of a wide variety of generally benign mods, usually those community-made modifications meant to improve the user experience.
For example "VRC-CC" a mod that adds closed captions to movie worlds so deaf/HH people can watch movies with their friends.
VRChat has always had a tumultuous relationship with mods, actually, they are against its terms of service. Even last year, it went as far as banning the accounts of a number of high-profile mod developers.
Angry fans = crazy boycotts
You may think that angry players can’t do much on the internet, well think again, as angry players had organized boycotts, the first of them a review-bombing on Steam, flooding Canny, VRChat’s official feedback platform with EAC protest tickets.
Another big amount of players are cancelling their VRChat Plus subscriptions or in other cases they are just migrating to other social VR games like ChilloutVR and Neos VR.
Last tweet of the night.
— 𝙏𝙝𝙧𝙞𝙡𝙡 (@Thrilluwu) July 27, 2022
Chillout VR head developer reports 10,000 people tried to register at the same time, bringing down servers.
This VRChat situation isn't just a few hundred angry users. pic.twitter.com/mZ5krX0AAx
VRChat team had answered already and it's not what players expected:
“We are reprioritizing, reorganizing, and changing our internal development roadmap to focus on the feedback you've given us. Let’s follow that up with the hard part: we are going to be releasing this update, and we do not have plans or intent to revert or roll it back.”
They also claimed that they are working in adding the accessibility features that VRChat currently lacks and most of them are being re-prioritized so they can arrive soon.
Were you an active VRChat user? Did this changed your experience dramatically? Let us know in the comments below
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