Discussion on the DRM Situations and Jinxxy's Response

[blackviperxvi]

Jinxxy just sent out an email addressing the DRM fiasco that has plagued the vrchat community as of recently. I was curious what people's thoughts were?

I personally don't think DRM has any business being a part of this community, it holds creators back, and the content being liscensable is... questionable. Almost every vrchat avatar in exception to furry and 100% from scratch bases, lets be honest, is compiled together by asset creators who carry the backbone of this community.

My main gripe is for as long as I've been on vrchat, which is close to a decade now, vrchat creation has been a HUGE part of the community. Avatars are a way people express themselves. It's how many people got into blender, and unity, and their creative hobbies that stretch out past vrchat and into other fields. DRM systems and Gonso rob people of that while holding hostage people's sense of safety when these creators are sloppily threatening with the information they're collecting. People pay $50USD to customize their avatars, personalize them, learn blender, that's why they spend that much money. A lot of people I know are uncomfortable buying avatars anymore due to the distrust this DRM crap has caused, and feeling unsafe. I am one of them. I don't like what vrchat has become.

DRM systems are a slap in the face to everyone in the past decade who enjoyed editing avatars. Who spent hard earned money on an avatar they connected with to edit in blender, to learn with and grow with. Updating avatars as time passes to keep them from being lost and outdated through blender.

Kitbashes are merely a product of hard work from someone else, compiled for profit. DRMs aren't about protecting content, because the easiest solution has been infront of these creators for a long time. If you don't want the content edited, and don't want the package redistributed, the simple solution is to add it to the vrchat store. The reason they can't is because they didn't make anything on the avatar. The only work they did was download other people's work. I speak this in exception to creators who 3d model from scratch, their passion is admirable and interestingly, aren't the ones overwhelmingly compensating with power plays and drm systems.

I find it genuinely disgusting.

I miss the days when vrchat was about making avatars to express yourself, sharing skills and creations, instead of greed, mistrust and venom. Creators doxxing and creating blacklists, collecting info, and avatars only existing for commercial gain. Quickly downloading assets and reselling them for profit. And nonstop aggressiveness and what feels like a war against entitled creators and people wanting to just be safe online. Info collecting. Info collecting. Info collecting. Info collecting.

Sure, some people can learn avatar creation, but not everyone can. VRChat used to be easy to get into, to the point videos would say, "don't make your own avatar first, start with a base to help you learn." And even free avatars are feeling more and more inaccessible because of the massive windows demanding your email, discord, vrchat, vrchat account link, on and on and on. It's simply become such a hostile space.

The simplest solution I have come to after all of this, is make a fake discord, make a fake vrchat, and make a fake email. They do not and have never needed your discord account. Especially not when they share that information with other creators for their mass blacklists.

And to the DRM creators, genuinely shame on you. Jinxxy should have a backbone and ban it entirely because, and I know I'm not the only one, don't trust these creators with these fucking softwares.

- BlackViperXVI