Above: Steam's VRChat ratings bombarded by protesters
A Metaverse platform is nothing without a thriving community, but the flipside is portions of that community can seem to endanger the platform. VRChat is experiencing that now, due to an announcement that seems benign on its face:
“Modified clients” are a large problem for VRChat in a variety of ways. Malicious modified clients allow users to attack and harass others, causing a huge amount of moderation issues. Even seemingly non-malicious modifications complicate the support and development of VRChat, and make it impossible for VRChat creators to work within the expected, documented bounds of VRChat.
In order to prevent that, we’ve implemented Easy Anti Cheat (EAC) into VRChat. If you’ve played Apex Legends, Fortnite, Gears of War, Elden Ring, or many more, you’ve seen Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC)… The integration of EAC means that all modified clients are blocked...
Every month, thousands of users have their accounts stolen, often due to running a modified client that is silently logging their keystrokes as well as other information. These users – often without even realizing it! – run the risk of losing their account, or having their computers become part of a larger botnet.
Excuse me while I recover over flashbacks around various modified third party-made Second Life viewers which were banned for having dubious features. As with Second Life, a highly vocal number of VRC players have been protesting VRChat's move since it was made, include bombarding its Steam listing with bad reviews. Which as you can see above, is also an indicator of how small the protest is: Less than 10,000 users have recently posted a negative review. (Based on various figures, I'd estimate VRChat has about 5 million monthly active users, give or take.)
Do the protestors have any legitimate points? Somewhat, in the sense that some mods include some features that provide text captions for deaf users, contrast for colorblind users, and so on. But then again, from VRChat the company's point of view, thousands of users are reportedly having their accounts actively stolen by modded viewers every month.
Which side is right? Rather than weigh in, I'll quote a famed and highly respected member of the VRChat creator community, who requested I quote them anonymously, "due to the toxicity online" (their words), and provided great context on the situation:
A large majority of the people complaining are complaining over "extra" features they got used to using even though it was always against TOS to use these. So I don't have sympathy for those people, especially the ones that going around spamming hate everywhere or trying to dox people.
However, it does negatively impact people with disabilities that used mods to make the platform usable. So I do feel bad for that player base, but VRChat have said they are working on getting some of these features out ASAP.
The end of mods is also a benefit for VRChat creators, my source tells me:
Now that mods are banned, there's less time needed from devs to troubleshoot issues caused by mods and they can put full focus on making these features officially. There's gonna be a little pain in between but I think for the long term of development, it was a needed step.
It's also on community to take the time to communicate with devs with proper feature requests on Canny. [A feature request page here.]
Many have not used it because they got used to mods having what they want, which makes VRChat devs not aware of some of these request features. So its sorta like a domino effect.
People also refuse to request official features due to the old argument of, "X feature has been requested 3 years ago on Canny and hasn't been added", which leads to people not trying any more requests which is also bad too.
Features people relied on, good and bad, that were provided through TOS breaking-mods are being removed. So naturally people will be super vocal about it. But because mods have been used by so many people for a long time, many just assumed it was normal to have these. Lots of misinformation over the years that a large portion of the community believed in. You'll get a lot of young users getting especially angry about something they use being taken away. Just like anything else online
A lot of the more vocal client mod users have always been toxic when it comes to defending using them or chasing people down on social media for saying something about them, so this action from VRChat just amplifies that sort of behavior and sadly, people with legitimate reasons to be upset are getting drowned out by the more immature rants.
Having talked with several other VRChat users, that all sounds roughly right, though they are all welcome to weigh in below. Before commenting, however, perhaps take a look at this thread from another VRChat creator with a balanced take:
Hey #VRChat community, commenting on the #NoEAC #VRCMods issue here: If you want to be taken seriously you HAVE TO rally around the issues with accessibility. No other argument holds water and is either hostile, based on rumor and speculation, or just flat out wrong
— IgbarVonSquid (@IgbarVonSquid) July 26, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Steam capture via @Thrilluwu.
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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