Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Just as the the VRChat creator economy is expanding, VRChat's creative community is roiling over a recent update with which broke CyanTrigger, a compiler for the platform's Udon scripting system which helps make in-scene editing fairly easy.

The creator, CyanLaser, is publicly outraged, while at least one top VRChat creator, Lakuza — of Bullet Time Agent fame — has angrily announced an indefinite break from world creation on the platform.

I reached out to Strasz, Senior Community Manager at VRChat, about the topic. What does the company recommend to VRC creators who are still using CyanTrigger?

"They can keep using it, if they'd like," Strasz tells me, "but at their own risk! You probably shouldn't rely on tools that aren't open source and that can be controlled by a single party. There are other tools out there that offer up easy ways of doing basic things in SDK3. For creators looking for more advanced tools, learning Udon is probably the smart move. One of the best things about the VRChat community is that there's always someone willing to share their knowledge or even team up!"

In any case, this is yet another application of my general rule for metaverse platforms, that any user-created feature/tool/content that becomes popular effectively becomes part of the platform itself. (At least until it's no longer usable.)

Above: Lakuza in their CyanTrigger-based Bullet-Time Agent game

At for CyanTrigger in particular, this seems like a mismatch between company and creator goals. I'm told CyanTrigger hasn't been updated in quite awhile, even though VRChat the company was paying to maintain it. And from the company's perspective, the creative tool might seem too limited to recommend to other users, especially as the platform continues updating around it.

I've also reached out to Cyan and will update this if I get a reply!