6 in the morning (a few days ago) I start getting bombarded with pings by Klaus. By the time I wake up from hearing the discord notification pings, he had sent me upwards of 15+ messages. …Really, Klaus. Really. This couldn’t had waited ’till the afternoon.
Checked the messages, they all have to do with leaving VRChat and going to ChilloutVR. He lists two main reasons;
1. A rumor some of the VRChat devs are secretly giving player avatars to Ripperstore, plus how they are “supporting” the hated website.
2. “Most” 3.0 worlds, the SDK has been manipulated to steal your avatar the moment you join.
The first one had me quite curious, but it also felt quite fishy. As in, why would the devs doom their own game? The VRChat Mod discord with their claims the devs are telling the truth, that they really need this money from VRC+.
I find what Klaus says is very unlikely, but he says he heard it from BlueBio. I don’t know him to lie to people. But I went back to sleep (because FUCK dealing with this now) and messaged Blue in the afternoon. He shuts down a part of the claim with them ‘supporting’– they’re not. But he cannot prove nor deny the rest of it. Says he heard this rumor from a group in Neos, and feels no doubt it’s likely happening.
–
As for the second one, I actually felt lowkey scared enough to ask the VRChat modding group if it’s true 3.0 worlds can steal avatars. The very thought of having your avatar stolen from just creating or joining an instance (even a private instance) of a 3.0 world
is.. unnerving.
The response I was given, is very encouraging. Not only is it not true, it’s not even possible. “SDK3 can’t send any HTTP requests that expose that kind of information” said one of the mod devs.
I remember reading something on the lines of this before, however it’s best to ask anyway.
Before I close out this post as honestly I cannot say or do anything to convince Klaus not to leave, I want to talk about the way I see this whole avatar ripping thing. And why I
simply.. do not care about my own avatars. When I told Blue this, he was shocked. “Why do you not care about your avatars being stolen?”
He even showed me they already ripped my avatars. But I didn’t care.
The avatar of a person is supposed to set the person’s personality. At least, the personality they want others to see (instead of their own). However this requires one to hide who they really are IRL in order to ‘fit in’.
I cannot do this. I cannot be someone I’m not. Sure I may use BTD, but I don’t try to make a personality from them. Their personality, is my personality. Plus, honestly.. since I didn’t pay for a single avatar, why should I care? All of my work is literally edits to a public avatar. The only exception to this is of course BTD 3.5 and 4.0 (that Wolves helped
with).
But I doubt even Wolves would care of the work he put in for a model, that looks as close as possible to clip art of a website I found long time ago, that I wanted to be my sona (that I hardly even use anymore as it’s not full body compatible).
–
Now then, the only reason I will care is if I see someone who decides to walk by me or one of my friends who knows me with one of my personal avatars (and my name isn’t above their head).
Of course their ass is grass with picture proof as I’ll be reporting them to the devs. And I’d like to see them try to crash me, as I have mods preventing this (plus a PC with decent enough specs).
Since none of my friends have said anything to me in the lines of “hey Benie, I saw this person with your avatar!”.. that’s why I don’t care they’ve been stolen (as long as I don’t see them actually being used). The fact they haven’t (at least not yet), proves to me that noone really cares enough to steal my work and pretend its their own.
I’m thankful for that.
So, that’s my take on this whole avatar stealing thing.