_mb2v

The slice of humanity on VRChat is significantly more neurotic and hypersexual than the average Gen-Xer ranting on Facebook. They’re also more OK being inappropriate around young children, the other large VRChat constituency. It’s worse in VRChat than in any other VR game or online multiplayer experience I’ve had (and I’ve had a lot) except maybe Second Life.

The Facebook crowd would be just as bad in VR, probably, but VRChat is its own sort of hive of scum and villainy.

When the service is full of kids anyway and the operator knows this, the situation changes. Also many adults (me, other users I’ve spoken with in-game) would like the option to filter NSFW content, as on practically every other large Internet platform.

The same kids whose parents bought them an XBox or PlayStation. The Quest 2 is cheaper than both at $300. It’s standalone so you don’t need a PC. There’s been a sea change in the VR player base since the first Quest came out:

https://youtu.be/wbB807o-Fjs

As with all DRM, it will pose no real obstacle to abusers will inconveniencing regular users (in this case, people using quality-of-life mods).

I submit that the problem is actually bigger than you think, there are in fact more malicious mods than you realize, and drastic measures should be taken. I don’t think EAC is the right fix and I think it’s being made for the wrong reasons.

Most regular users don’t use or know about anti-crasher mods, and in any case the problems are inherent to the game’s design. Fixing those problems should be VRChat’s main goal.

The OP is about VRChat mods. I started talking about malicious mods and segued into bad stuff on VRChat in general, which I think is both relevant and interesting to HN users. If you don’t like it, I encourage you to help remove the bad stuff.

It sounds like you’re a VRChat mod user who is unhappy with the new update, and thinks I am defending it based on the bad mods it will ban. This is not what is happening. I am ambivalent to negative on EAC. The purpose of my comment above is to raise awareness of the bad parts of VRChat generally, especially to HN users unfamiliar with this game and its risks for younger users. I think EAC is a bandaid that will negatively impact good users and have minimal impact on bad actors.

Many mods are used for malicious purposes. This doesn’t mean ‘ban mods,’ it means patch the holes bad mods exploit.

Yes, to an extent it’s more of the same, just more immersive. If you’re an adult, the bad stuff is white noise for the most part.

If you’re a kid, it can be scary and potentially dangerous. The game is advertised with cartoon characters and a child-friendly aesthetic, far from what you actually find in public worlds. It’s easy for bad actors to hone in on kids based on voice, then corner them and do bad things. I’ve spoken to kids who were approached and “flashed” by much older users with explicit, ejaculating sexual avatars. It’s unpleasant and disorienting. Not to mention adults who zero in on kids, drop a portal to show them a “cool world” and then get them one-on-one in essentially an unsupervised VoIP call. This platform is practically designed to trap and abuse kids.

And yes, kids technically aren’t allowed to play VRChat or even go online using the Quest per Terms of Service. Enforcement is impossible, not that anyone tries, so kids are everywhere.

It doesn’t. I’m talking about a problem that’s inherent to the base game, and unfortunately not widely known.

Tangentially to EAC, I've commented downthread several times on the danger to children and lax moderation of VRChat, but just to drive the point home, search "VRCat" on PornHub and you'll find all sorts of videos created in-game. These are avatars on VRChat's servers that users can and sometimes do use in public worlds. Officially VRChat's Terms of Service prohibits NSFW content. In practice, the game's loading screen tips say "no NSFW content in public worlds" and staff know exactly what's going on.

There is no NSFW tagging system, no content filtering for uploaded avatars, no effective means to permanently ban abusive users, and extremely lax in-game moderation. There are tons of sexualized, fully nude, and fully-functional avatars all over the place. Spend a couple hours in the main public worlds and you're almost guaranteed to see some. Remember, this game is absolutely full of children and pre-teens, and the kind of adults who choose to hang out around them. The game is free on the Meta Quest store with zero age restrictions.

>You have no idea what you're talking about regarding mods. Like, at all.

Enlighten us!

A certain type of community is drawn to a particular kind of platform.

In this case, an exploitable platform filled with children and near-zero moderation of sexualized content. As you know, VRChat doesn't even have an NSFW tagging system or option for users to filter such content out (without hiding all custom avatars, i.e. disabling VRChat's core functionality).

You're sort of proving my point here.

"Second Life Is Plagued by Security Flaws, Ex-Employee Says; A former infosec director at Linden Lab alleges the company mishandled user data and turned a blind eye to simulated sex acts involving children."

https://www.wired.com/story/second-life-plagued-security-fla...

This community is now deeply imbedded in VRChat, another platform full of unsupervised children and security flaws.

Some good memes about this on the VRChat subreddit, which was locked to new submission fifteen minutes ago in response to the overwhelming community outrage:

https://www.reddit.com/r/VRchat/

VRChat doesn't reflect human nature overall, just those who fail adapt to the mainstream and hide out online 24/7. High overlap with Second Life, 4channers, and heavy Discord users, less of an overlap with people who play competitive games or contribute to society.

That was five years ago. Now it's about screaming kids, adults grooming children, and sitting in front of mirrors in hypersexualized avatars.

VRChat is jam-packed with malicious users who use modded clients or run Wireshark to dox and harass people using their IP. Imagine an adult telling a little kid in VR, "I know where you live, it's in X city" and then social-engineering their way to even worse places. They did a big refactor a few years ago to remove all/most P2P networking due to the DDoS and harassment problems. The VRChat community is incredibly toxic.

The ugly parts have taken over. The Second Life users have moved in and now dominate many spaces, along with tons of kids ("Questies") and the usual always-online contingent of furries, extremists of various sorts, and adults being creepy around young kids.

There's still cool stuff there and unique and positive interactions to be had, but it's a slog.

As a frequent VRChat user: the problem is entirely sloppy API design, poor to nonexistent moderation, a security team detached from reality (the team lead posts often in the VRChat Discord, or used to), and the fundamental problem of running a no-stakes social game where getting banned and losing your account is no obstacle to further bad behavior. Getting banned from WoW means you lose your time investment in level 60 and raid gear; getting banned from VRChat means you make a new dummy email and log right back in. Any VR game with real time investment doesn't have this problem.

One of their competitors, Neos, already has some kind of built-in cryptocurrency:

https://neos.com/#neos-credits

The selling point of Neos used to be that it allowed 10-point full-body tracking (as opposed to 6-point) while VRChat did not, but VRChat recently added that functionality.