I'm also poor, I can't afford avatars anymore. I got scammed one time paying 80 dollars for "limited edition models" that were mmd T_T they're 2.0 and super outdated now, but yeah. I stuck to free avatars and editing them but its hard to do that with the information farming now.

I'm not surprised at all. I just really hate what the Gonso crap and DRMs have done to vrchat. They really seem to just screw EVERYBODY over.

I come from an age when vrchat creation was friendly, I learned blender model creation through editing avatars in blender. It harms everybody. Recently an avatar called Druffle came out and surprised everyone with a DRM sytem in it, which felt like a slap in the face because it meant you can't edit it outside of unity. And furry creators often make entire outfits and stuff around the base, can't optimize it, yet they still want full price for stuff. I have also had to work in blender before to FIX avatars that became outdated that I paid for. I rip and am unwilling to buy from creators anymore because I hate how they're acting even towards people who aren't rippers and leakers, just regular folk taught internet safety and not wanting to dox all their info for an avatar compiled together with other people's hard work (kitbashing).

The only avatar I've even actually ripped was my partner's avatar who died suddenly. I reached out to the creator, heard nothing. They deleted their avatar world, so I ripped the avatar afraid I'd lose it. I'm not sorry for that, I was grieving.

I don't know. until they get their shit together, I'm not supporting vrchat creators anymore. I actually recently tried to buy an avatar, I saved up for a long time to get it thinking I wanted to support them genuinely because I loved the avatar. I finally had the means to get it, went to pay, and was banned from the store and it ruined my whole day. I guess previously I'd bought something free and they didn't like I didn't give my for realzies discord before I made my fake one I have now. I don't know. I'm exhausted with them genuinely.

Further note, if they don't want the avatar to be able to be put into blender, then the simple solution is use the vrchat store. that's it. they also shouldn't be charging 50$ a pop for slop people can't even edit. I often buy avatars and have to fix them in some way or another, that's the fun, but can't because of this. If I can't actually edit the avatar or do anything with it, don't charge me for the price of actually BUYING the avatar files. At that rate just charge an upload fee and not for the actual avatar base since it's a waste of PC storage.

Rant over but, sheesh. It just really bums me out.

This whole mess has been incredibly stressful.