Hey Hey Everyone,

Today, I want to discuss my concerns regarding the VRChat platform and its future. I wish to build my case for possibly going standalone, and I want to hear what you all have to say on the topic.

I know this is a very long post, so a tl;dr is available at the bottom for your convenience.

Recent World Trends

Newly published worlds have increasingly featured VRChat's premium currency. Usage often includes:

• Paid, temporary features that go away after a set amount of time has passed.

• Resources or experience boosts.

• Displaying premium features first in user interfaces.

Of course, donations are important and allow us to continue creating. I don't fault anyone for including these features in their worlds, especially making content for free. I simply do not wish to include them in my content, and wish to embrace a fully donation focused path.

That being said, I have begun to notice trends which favor these types of worlds and content. Including paid features leads to more players, and more engagement. I believe the future of the VRChat platform will be more-so akin to Roblox with frequent use of premium currency for items and features we would call standard today.

World creation drifting towards this model makes me uncomfortable, and concerned for its future. I fear that VRChat will push worlds that feature their own payment model, forcing others down in the process.

Unity Engine Concerns

Following the conversion to Unity 2022, I've found the engine to be much less stable. Unity must periodically re-import assets and redraw its GUI, often taking several minutes to complete. I estimate the time it takes waiting for Unity to regenerate its .meta files is on-par with creating a world itself.

Their CEO has stated that Unity 6 will move towards AI-generated content and games.

This is greatly concerning, and I fear a future VRChat update to Unity 6 would completely deflate the platform as a creative outlet.

UdonSharp and Network Decay

VRChat gives us some limited options for dealing with latency and networking. More and more frequently, I have found that loss of data in real world conditions have made local testing infeasible.

GARDEN has suffered greatly due to this issue. Its save system requires sending large amounts of data through strings, which the platform appears to be unable to handle with frequent loss of data.

This issue only affects certain users, making it more difficult to diagnose on a case-by-case basis.

UdonSharps' library is also very, very limited with unusual limitations. More obscure core functions often do not even include the standard "this function is not supported by Udon" and are replaced with strange memory address errors.

Documentation is also a problem. There are multiple entries in Udons' docs that are either missing or have a "to-do" message appended to the bottom of an article.

An Alternative

Recently, I've been practicing with the Godot engine following its 4.6 redesign. I've already recreated some core systems: Interactions, AI pathing, loading custom images and level generation: All completed in an afternoon.

Godot, and standalone games would be an excellent alternative that would allow me to break from the confines of Udons limited library, and the Unity Engine itself.

Not Fully Leaving

While it has its faults, VRChat is still an excellent platform for creating VR content. I don't see myself ever fully leaving, and I still have multiple ideas that would only truly work with the platform.

Also...

Standalone Releases & Freedom of Entertainment Policy

If I were to go standalone, I would likely release content free of charge for awhile as I get the hang of the engine: It depends on how much I put into it.

Any standalone, purchasable game would be offered as a zipped up, portable installation given to patrons, with names included in credits and attributes.

If you've invested and purchased a product, it's yours to keep. "You will own nothing" and digital licensing is stupid and greedy.

TL;DR

I am uncomfortable with recent trends in world creation, and I have lost confidence in the Unity Engine.

UdonSharp continues to have vague issues, and I don't think the team is very interested in addressing them. Developing content for VRChat is a nightmare.

I would like to move onto standalone projects made with Godot, while releasing the occasional world best-fitted for VR.

/// I want to hear what you think! ///

I want to hear what everyone has to say, but Patreon took away my ability to make polls

Here's a public StrawPoll

The Discord has a Patron-only poll available in the dev channel