VR Chat Security Update Results in Mass Protests by Playerbase

 
By Bixyl Shuftan

In the past few years, VR Chat has enjoyed an increase in numbers. They've gone from 9,100 active users in February 2018, when the Newser gave a review, to 42,500 in December 2021 (link). These are numbers that have made it a true rival to Second Life in contrast to the various Opensim worlds. The world has gotten both praise and condemnation. Early in its history, it was documented that several players came to the aid of another who suffered an epileptic seizure (article). More recently, there were allegations that younger teen users were being "groomed" into sexual acts (article). 

This week however came a move by the development team that resulted in both pushback from many users plus fewer people getting online in the world. 

On Monday July 25, the developers announced a security update (link), the largest change being the installation of "Easy Anti-Cheat." "If you’ve played Apex Legends, Fortnite, Gears of War, Elden Ring, or many more," they stated, "you’ve seen Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC). EAC is the industry-leading anti-cheat service. It’s lightweight, effective, and privacy-focused. In short, for any game or platform looking to prevent malicious users from breaking the rules, it’s a powerful solution."

The reason for this security update, they stated, was because of problems with modified viewers being used to grief other users, "“Modified clients” are a large problem for VRChat in a variety of ways. Malicious modified clients allow users to attack and harass others, causing a huge amount of moderation issues. Even seemingly non-malicious modifications complicate the support and development of VRChat, and make it impossible for VRChat creators to work within the expected, documented bounds of VRChat."

The problem is, EAC will not just block harmful mods, but ones useful to players. Some help in avatars being more interactive. Some help enhance the experience, such as VRC-CC which allows closed-captioning for deaf players so they can see movies inworld. 

https://twitter.com/TheFoxipso/status/1551640725455982593

Apparently, there's been an "unspoken culture," as Alexandra Hall of Kotaku describes, of mods being tolerated "unless they flaunted their upgrades or otherwise caught moderators’ attention." The result has been a "thriving underground mod scene" that allowed players to enjoy the game in ways not intended by the developers and for disabled players to get around the platforms shortcomings many say the developers were slow to adress. Some were also made to help protect players from malicious mods, "oftentimes unofficial mods have been the only means by which to access certain features, ranging from support for exotic hardware like advanced trackers and networked sex toys to addressing accessibility concerns like closed captioning and text-to-speech. Also popular were mods that tried to protect against malicious 'crasher' avatars, mods that helped to increase framerates in the notoriously sluggish, Unity-based game, and mods that allowed avatar searching, a basic-seeming feature that VRChat still lacks."

The development team acknowledges there is a problem, "we hear you and see you saying that many of the modified client features that are being lost due to this are extremely important to you, or in some cases allow you to use VRChat at all, when in regards to modifications that added accessibility features that VRChat currently lacks." But are going ahead with it, "we are going to be releasing this update, and we do not have plans or intent to revert or roll it back." 

The result has been numerous complaints, including many angry ones, from a number of VR Chat's users. The Steam page was full of recent negative reviews. "The latest update introduced Easy Anti-Cheat which has turned the game into garbage," wrote a Yifrick, "This was an amazing social game but now the developers have gone and ???? on it and everyone who loved this game by including this spyware under the pretence of making the game 'safer' for users, when it does absolutely no such thing, and actively harms the community." "Many hours i played and some years on it," wrote an Appie_Dude, " but when I heard of the new update, no (I) am done, am out. ... the devs won't listen to people and go for the money now. You ruined a game, goodluck." "You literally just destroyed your community who heavily relys on mods for quality of life improvements since you are so slow to do it yourself," wrote a Smackdatmoney, "What a actual shame that you continued and STILL went through with it anyways even after massive community backlash. ... you've just became another one of those companies who see their own community as 'idiots who dont know what their talking about'. ..."

In one review by a Soulful, "there's not a lot to be said here about the state of VRC. I've had issues for a while, game has serious optimization issues for folks who play through virtual desktop, has pretty much no graphical optimization implemented in any capacity, atop of compounding problems with lack of communication, community engagement, and a huge lack of understanding with their userbase's needs and wants. I lived with these issues, in hopes that these features would be implemented sometime, having relied on modding and even Steam's own built in VR stuff to help with these problems, which has been a godsend for those times when there's more than a handful of folks around ... For a long while the VRC team either would ignore a lot of these posts of critique and even real complaints of issues, or directly missing the point of something being brought up to begin with, it was nothing new, now though they're showing their ugly heads when it comes to something as big as adding an anti cheat. Normally I'd be for them implementing something into the game to help with dealing with malicious users doing things like code injecting or script kiddy nonsense to harass and disrupt other people. (But) to destroy something as big and as fundamental as the modding community, the Steam community, and even just plain ol Meta/Quest users on Virtual Desktop ... outright shutting down all sorts of background apps and taking snapshots of your PC if it even suspects even a little bit of something 'suspicious' or 'malicious', and is already VERY well known for not playing well with lots of 3rd party software used in day to day services, including VR services, and from the statements they've been handing out, and lots of the other things going on with VRC itself lately in terms of monetization, it's very clear where they lie in terms of the future of their platform. And it's not to be user friendly, not to be community friendly, and definitely not to be true to the spirit of a social platform to push any envelopes in the VR industry."

Someone named Keith complained the update didn't really stop malicious users, writing, "EAC was defeated in less than 2 hours after it hit the Beta Branch. This means that any malicious actor who wants to continue to use mods to cause problems can do so unimpeded. ... even if EAC was a perfect anticheat with no way around it? That wouldn't stop 99% of crashers, rippers, and account hijackers. The VAST majority of those people utilize completely vanilla clients because VRChat's code is just that insecure. ... at the end of the day EAC is a pure negative. There isn't a single pro about its presence in VRC. It will only make the crashing and other issues worse as it strips people of community made defenses, it takes away many accessibility features disabled folk relied on to be able to participate, and without the community driven QOL options many people use, VRChat just becomes an inferior platform compared to other options."

In the past few days, upset users have "review bombed" VRChat. Its recent reviews were ranked "Overwhelmingly Negative."

"Disabled players are feeling the brunt of this update the most," stated an article from Eurogamer that appeared in senegalbgs.org, "They say they are now stuck with a game they cannot play, with no guidance on when the game will be made accessible to them and no guaranteed way of making sure their needs are being listened to. ... this is a huge setback, particularly considering the work that is going into accessibility options in high-profile games . They say they now find themselves stuck in an ecosystem that has taken away the tools that allow them to join in without providing a sufficient alternative."

Not everyone is complaining. Talking to Marusame, who started out in Second Life, but appears much more often in VRChat now, he stated he didn't use mods, "Most people are just (complaining) because they can no longer use mods that give you power like flying around, crashing people, messing with things like turning off mirrors or making things move around or generally being a nuisance. ... though this doesnt get rid of crasher avatars. Imagine if in Second Life someone could whip out an avatar and crash a sim?" She also thought people had plenty of time to get ready, "I've known they was gonna do something like this for MONTHS. I've hanged out with some of the devs and one works on security. ... so for me, this change didnt do much other than lobbies are filled with less crashers now and they are more chill. (It) reminds me of the Second Life Windlight UI thing where everyone said they'd go to Opensim because of it, and a month later everyone came back."

So what to do? There are calls not to get on VRChat for a week so the drop in numbers will get the attention of the development team. There are also calls for those who signed up for VRChat Plus, a $9.95 USD a month subscription service to cancel. 

I had a few words with Johnny Vulpine, who was "a longtime SL user and also a VRC user." He recommended using a couple alternative clients to get onto VRChat, Neos and ChilloutVR, "If you are looking for something similar to VRC where you can hop in, throw on or upload an avatar and go socialize. ChilloutVR might be more your speed. Like VRC, it's easy to get in and just go. Content creation is done outside of the game and uploaded in. If you are looking for something more like SL but in VR, I think you will love Neos. Neos is a VR social app just like VRC and Chillout. But like SL, it has a full range of building tools in-game, you have an in-game inventory which already comes stocked with some basic things. Or you can upload content built outside the game. I will add that the learning curve for Neos can be a bit daunting. BUT you do not need to learn every aspect of building and content creation to enjoy the game. There are already TONS of avatars (many of the same ones used in VRC) that you can pickup and use for free."

Marusame was less enthusiastic about the alternative clients, saying ChilloutVR was harder to use, "the api is fried, also the sdk is janky was harder to upload an avatar than vrchat especially to get material toggles and has a harsher public avatar upload review process." But went on to say they are "doing a lot of hiring so maybe they actually want to do something. Neos VR I hear is more complicated and you can build in world, very Second Lifey experience. But development is dead at the moment with people leaving and infighting."

So what are Second Life users thinking of this development? There was one meme of two sailors getting disciplined by their captain. One was a VRChat user, complaining this was cruel and unusual punishment. The other was a 16 year veteran of Second Life, who was taking things in stride, and looking to the VRChat user and asking, "First time?"

Erron Kelly in Venturebeat would comment that there was something about VRChat that reminded him of the early "Wild West" days of the Internet, which while offering an unexplored frontier also had bad guys such as trolls using racist language, "VRChat taking steps to sanitize that stuff? In the long run it’s probably good for the software. But every time the Old West gets settled it’s a little sad. That’s just me being nostalgic about how I grew up. The people losing access to genuine quality-of-life mods? They’ve really got something to complain about."

Sources: Vice, PC Gamer, Venturebeat, Steam, Eurogamer/Sengal, Kotaku 

Bixyl Shuftan
 

News and Commentary: More on Blizzard's China Controversy

By Bixyl Shuftan

Last month, Blizzard stripped a Hearthstone tournament winner of his prize money and suspended him from further matches for a year following the gamer from Hong Kong using the short time he was given for an interview to openly proclaim his support for the protests there. The company stated he had violated one of the rules by "engaging in an act that ... brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image." The company also dismissed the two men who were doing the interview. At first, it appeared that the two men, independent contractors whom were not directly employed by Blizzard, were dismissed for no reason. But it turned out they knew what the gamer they were about to interview was up to. The reaction of a number of gamers in Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and other games Blizzard owns, was to cancel their accounts and call for a boycott.

Since my first article on the subject, the story has continued to develop. A CBS story on October 10 stated the stock price of Activision/Blizzard had fallen. Access Now, a group aimed at protecting peoples rights online, called out, "Blizzard demonstrates a lack of respect for the human rights of its users." Some US politicians also spoke out against Blizzard's actions.

Blizzard eventually gave Blitzchung his prize money back and reduced his ban to six months. It would also reduce the ban of the two broadcasters, whom were in on the protest the gamer was about do. While Blizzard's President Allen Brack admitted they had acted too quickly in response to the incident, they insisted they had to act to keep gamers focused on games, The specific views expressed by Blitzchung were not a factor in the decision we made. ... I want to be clear: our relationships in China had no influence on our decision."

There would be another protest, and suspension. On October 16, Blizzard banned three players over holding up a sign, "Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizzard" during a livestream a few days before. Despite that banning, and stories about people being banned from the Blizzard forums for bringing up the Hong Kong controversy, there were talks about mass-protests at Blizcon on November 1. While Blizzard had canceled a scheduled launch event for it's Overwatch game, it couldn't just up and cancel it's annual convention.

Players have continued to express their disapproval, such as a commentary in Massively, "The Blizzard I Knew Is Dead." Tyler Edwards would write, "... the theme of fighting to overthrow tyrannical governments has come up again and again. Suramar, Mists of Pandaria, Battle for Azeroth… The face of StarCraft is Jim Raynor, a character who spent most of the franchise fighting for freedom against oppressive regimes. And now Blizzard has actively aided and abetted oppression by a real world dictatorship. When one of its players spoke up in favor of democracy, Blizzard helped silence his voice, at a time when democracy is under fire all over the world – all to protect business interests in mainland China, a country that makes up only a tiny fraction of its global revenue. It’s wrong, and it’s cowardly, and it goes against everything Blizzard is supposed to stand for."

Other protests included artistic ones. The character Mei of Blizzard's game Overwatch, was drawn by numerous people protesting the company as being a sympathizer of Hong Kong's resistance. There was also at least one online cartoon, Sandra and Woo, in which the artist mocked Blizzard for pretending to stand for human rights while submitting to China's demands.

Finally came Blizzcon, which had the company President Brack appear on stage for the opening ceremonies. And at one point, he brought up the controversy and apologized, “When I think about what I’m most unhappy about, it’s really two things. The first one is we didn’t live up to our high standards that we set for ourselves. And the second is, we failed in our purpose. And for that I’m sorry, and I accept accountability."

While Brack got a standing ovation for his apology at Blizcon, checking the responses to the apology in the article, most I saw were negative saying the response was inadequate. There were some saying this was either as good as they could expect from a corporation to that there was nothing that could be done about Hong Kong, "I feel for the peeps at hong kong, I truly do... I wish them nothing but the best... but I'm still going to play their games. I believe no matter what phrases we say, it wont change the way China is." Nydia Tungsten of the Furry Gamers Group in Second Life would comment the apology reminded her of a child chastised by it's parents that was saying "sorry" only because it was ordered to.

Blizzard would go on to introduce the next expansion for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. And in the game itself is having it's fifteenth anniversary. But the controversy is a dark cloud over the occasion. As a similar controversy has been hounding the NBA, it seems what happened with Blizzard/Activision is part of a larger problem. American companies love Chinese money so much, many if not most will compromise their principles to get it.

For yours truly, I ended up getting back into the game just before Blizzard banned the gamer from Hong Kong for calling out for his city being able to keep the freedoms it's people enjoyed. That the company, or at least it's President, went out and apologized makes me feel like I can stay in with a clean conscience. But why did it have to get in this mess to begin with? As some friends are sticking around, I will too, at least for now.

 Sources: CBS, Tech Times, Vice, Tweaktown, Massively, Kotaku, IGN


Bixyl Shuftan

News and Commentary: Blizzard's Removing Hong Kong Gamer From Tournament Sparks Calls for Boycott, Debate on Free Speech

By Bixyl Shuftan

I had hoped to make my next article related to Blizzard about it's upcoming version of World of Warcraft in which the heroes go up against a horrific enemy of the likes one sees in a Lovecraft novel, and there are a couple new player races to choose from, the half-machine Mechagnomes for the Alliance and the foxlike Vulpera for the Horde. With the latter, some Second Life friends were looking forward to going about as fluffy-tailed folks and wisecracking jokes like, "What’s a Vulpera’s favorite dance? The fox trot." Some of us whom had gotten out of the game due to both lighter interest and it's subscription fee got back in. This included yours truly, whom last week returned and signed up for a few months as some good gaming friends would be spending time there, so I thought.

But there's been some news in the world of gaming that has given some of us second thoughts about adventuring in Azeroth, and it isn't about the content of the game, but the actions of the company that owns it, Blizzard, concerning another of it's games, Hearhstone.

Last weekend, there was an Asia-Pacific Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament. Among those taking part was Ng "Blitzchung" Wai Chung of Hong Kong. He won, and when interviewed afterwards, he declared his support for the protests going on in the city, "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time," wearing a mask and goggles much like what some of the protesters have been wearing. For those who haven't been paying attention much to news from Asia, over time the government of China has made a number of demands on the autonomous city of Hong Kong which many of it's inhabitants feel break the promise it made of letting them govern themselves when Britain ceded control of the city over twenty years ago. This includes that anyone running for office there has to be approved by China's government. Months ago, Hong Kong's council was set to vote on a bill that would mean anyone in the city charged with a crime by the Communist government would be subject to arrest by local police and deportation. Since then, many of the people of the city of 7.5 million have been protesting in the streets. Over 2300 have been arrested so far and over 2000 injured. There is no end in sight to the protests.

Blizzard responded by taking down the video of the interview (though copies of it can be seen elsewhere), and on Tuesday October 8, the company stripped Ng of his prize, and banning him from Hearthstone tournaments for a year. They stated that he had violated one of the rules of the game, "Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD ..." Blizzard also fired the two commentators whom did the interview, Mr. Yee and Virtual (real name unknown). Virtual would later explain neither he or Mr Yee were told why they were dismissed, and about half of his income comes from broadcasting the tournaments, "If Blizzard bans me from casting any Hearthstone tournament, it will really hurt." Neither worked directly for Blizzard, but were independent contractors.

The result was a backlash from a number of gamers, whom began cancelling accounts to Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and other games owned by Blizzard. Some expressed their comments on a "Boycott Blizzard" Twitter feed. One posted his response to when Blizzard asked his reasons for canceling his subscription, "I have been a loyal WoW player since 2007, spending literal years of my life on Azeroth. However, I can no longer support a company whose corporate policy considers speaking outu against human rights violations constitutes a "breach of contract." I'm still rooting for all the talented developers, artists, and writers working at Blizard but I will no longer support the company until these oppressive practices change." A thread on the topic in the Blizzard forums would get over 7300 responses as of the writing of this article.

Not everyone at Blizzard agrees with the company's reaction to the incident. A small number of employees did a walkout at the main office, gathering at it's Orc statue. Some had umbrellas, a symbol of the protests in Hong Kong. One employee would comment online, "The action Blizzard took against the player was pretty appalling but not surprising. Blizzard makes a lot of money in China, but now the company is in this awkward position where we can’t abide by our values."

This incident comes at about the time of two other high-profile ones involving business, free speech, and China. Last Friday, Daryl Morey, the General Manager of the Houston Rockets made and later deleted a Twitter post in support of the Hong Kong protesters. Despite the team owner speaking out against the comment, and that the tweet couldn't be see in China as it is banned there, the Chinese Basketball Association suspended all cooperation with the team, and events by the team would no longer be broadcasted by China's top station. At first, the NBA, which after investing years and millions in China gets about ten percent of it's revenue from the country, distanced itself from the comment. But when a number of Americans complained, including several politicians of both political parties, on Tuesday October 8 NBA Commissioner Adam Silver stated they would not censor players or team owners over remarks about China.

The other incident was the 300th episode of the "South Park" animated comedy show, "Band in China." The show poked fun at Chinese censorship and American companies bowing down to pressure from the Chinese government in order to do business there. The result was the show practically vanishing from the Internet within China. The response from the show's two creators was a mock apology, "Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts. We too love money more than freedom and democracy. ... Long live the great Communist Party of China. May the autumn's sorghum harvest be bountiful. We good now China?"

These three incidents combined have reignited debate nationwide about how much should American companies compromise their principles in order to do business with a dictatorship that controls over a billion people. But Blizzard's move also presented an ethical dilemma to some of my gaming friends in Second Life. For Nydia Tungsten, the head of the Furry Gamers group, as much as she relished the idea of going about Azeroth as a bushy-tailed vixen, Blizzard's move led her to cancel her account. She would post the following.

My friends and I were all looking forward to this, but due to Blizzards actions we as well as the gaming groups we belong to have canceled our subscriptions, the only way to get a companies attention is to hit them where they will notice it, their wallets. They MAY have appeased China, but can they be supported by China alone? I don't think so, spread the word and take your money from their wallets.

"I am not leaving the game forever," Nydia would also state, "but I DO want Blizzard to feel the backlash of their actions." Not everyone in the Furry Gamers went along however, notably some longtime players of World of Warcraft, "I am refusing to get drawn into a political flame war. I'm going to keep playing because I've spent far too many years in this damn game to stop doing it over politics."

For yours truly, the timing of Blizzard's move happened just after I'd gotten back in World of Warcraft. Since a number of my friends were either ramping up their time in Warcraft or getting back in, and Ark and Rust were getting laggier and crashy, I went ahead and bought the latest version of the game *and* subscribed for the next few months. I intend to go ahead and get what I paid for. But unless Blizzard makes some kind of amends, I might as well cancel my subscription as well. So where will I and the white vixen be gaming next? We'll find a place.

Sources: Kotaku, Blizzard forums, Ars Technica, PC Gamer, CNN, Vulture,

Bixyl Shuftan

What's New With the Angels in Minecraft

By Bixyl Shuftan

Besides the official Minecraft, there's a modified version known as "Feed the Beast," or FTB for short. Made not by Mojang, the company founded by Minecraft's creator, but by other players, FTB is different from "Vanilla" Minecraft as there's more kinds of minerals to dig and players are able to build more things, and do more things. The catch is FTB can "lag" a bit for players, and crash quite a bit, due to that severs can be quite taxing to the computers they're hosted on.

The "Angels" group in Second Life, friends of Nydia Tungsten, the majority whom reside in the Angel Estates, have a number of creative players. They had a taste of what they could do earlier on a FTB server hosted by Kit Repine. They could build new suits of armor, special boots that would keep you from being hurt in falls, energy guns that could take down hostile mobs, robot miners that could clear out huge sections of rock, "Portal" guns that allowed players to take shortcuts in getting around, being able to access new realms, and more. So when Nydia got a new computer about the time a new updated FTB was available, she created a server for it. She invited players over to "do their worst" with the most elaborate builds, and a number obliged, making huge machines that yours truly can barely figure out how to work, let alone build.

Unfortunately, Nydia's new computer failed. Not wanting to frustrate the Angels, Nydia moved the server to her older computer, but the server was frequently down due to crashes. Finally Kit offered to host Nydia's server on her computer, and it was transferred over.

 Players made huge, fancy, builds, such as a huge palace made by Valkyrie McGil.

There was also a giant "Tardis" constructed by Hojo. Note the big tree next to it, which was hollow, and could be made into a treehouse, which Jasmine did with another.

Yours truly while exploring near Hojo's base around found a tall, thin, natural feature beside a hill. I christened it "The Finger" and made that my base of operations, hollowing it out, and digging down to mine for ores and diamonds. I never did find any of the latter (nor closer pics of my base that I could have sworn I took). Jasmine would help in making a tunnel from it to just outside her hollowed giant tree.

FTB has a number of new mobs, such as wisps which can dart around and zap players. One player, Skylark (wearing a squid hat), came across a wisp spawner. But instead of destroying it, she grabbed it, and decided to cage it. 

Skylark made a place offshore, and putting the spawner down, began to encase it in glass. The spawner soon created new wisps, which took a toll on her. But eventually, she got it caged, and the wisps inside could only dart around harmlessly, unable to zap anyone.

Near Nydia and Brandi Streusel's base, a huge mining pit left by machines. Note the oil geyser behind it.

There were other features, such as "Mystcraft," which allowed players to travel to other worlds. Some could be hazardous, as their own laws of virtual nature could be quite different. One had burning sunlight that damaged players out in the open. We mused we finally knew what it was like to be a zombie.

Unfortunetly, the world would run into trouble that was beyond even Kit's computer and Nydia's skill. An early sign was when one of Skylark's pet squirrel's got loose, and when poked, it exploded and left a huge crater. The joke was it ate uranium from a reactor and turned into a "mini-nuke." But before the joke got old, a nuclear reactor build malfunctioned and blew. The result wasn't a big hole, but the whole minecraft world on the server had its code corrupted beyond repair. We would have to start over.

As it turned out, there was a new version of FTB out, or rather of the "Direwolf" which we used (FTB Launcher 1.3.2 / Minecraft 1.6.4 / Direwolf20 1.0.07). So we'd be getting new things to see, and play with. We were given about 48 hours of "creative mode" to aid in getting about and building what we wanted, then it was back to survival mode.

 

Near where I first appeared was a volcano, which made for a great reference point at night. The island in the sky seen to the upper left turned out to be made out of slime.

And not far from the volcano was a village. I went ahead and made it my base of operations, using creative mode to make a wall around it. Besides looking cool, it had the bennefit of helping keep out most of the mobs ... most. A few still spawn on the inside.

There were new mobs, such as blue mana creepers, and icy "Blizz" creatures that tossed snowballs. In creative mode, one could take on the appearance of mobs that the player clobbered at least one of. In the new FTB, focusing on an object or player up close would give you the name.

Jasmine and Kryxia built their own base some distance south of the volcano village. They would also build a fenced area of horses, donkeys, and other critters, and then a stable.

And to the north, this fenced in forest area with deer, squirrels, sheep, including the new rams, and other critters. I believe it's Skylark's base.

*Addition* It turned out it was Valkyrie's forest.

This new kind of tree's a bit big for cutting down for wood.

Not all wood has to be chopped down. Some trees have fallen and lie on the ground to be chopped up.

And so, the sun rises on a new world for the Angels of Second Life to build on. It's not their first, and most likely not the last. But they'll be making a few memories here when not in Second Life.

Bixyl Shuftan