Dumb 1984 comparison aside, it does look like what VRChat is doing is pretty shit.
Titled "The VRChat Security Update", the update implements EasyAntiCheat, as an attempt to curb the use of modifications of the VRChat client, particularly targeting the development and use of malicious mods. This intent of this is stated to be focusing on the safety of players.
Mods which crash or lag games, break the audio system, and otherwise impair the user experience have been a persistent issue with the game for a considerable amount of time. These have formed an underground community of people who have dedicated their time to crashing public lobbies, annoying players, and overall creating an unpleasant experience.
Despite this, a heavily organized and vetted modding community has gained traction, surrounding anti-crash, QoL, and accessibility features, and new features that VRChat Team wishes not to implement for a variety of technical reasons. These mods are prevalent in the VRChat community; many disabled community members rely on them to play the game other dedicated VRChat player use them to fix issues that have remained unfixed for a considerable time, and many more use popular anti-crash mods to protect themselves from the effects of malicious mods and mod users.
This update inhibits the use of all mods, benign or malicious. Many leading members of the benign community VRC Modding Group have issued warnings about this decision - while benign mod creators would not risk the consequences of circumventing the anti-cheat, malicious users would not be deterred, they claim. The remaining accessibility issues also remain unaddressed with this implementation, leaving many community members stranded.
In essence, this move is being decried by many prominent community members, and by a large amount of the playerbase, as incentivizing malicious play and punishing benign play, as well as limiting the game for people who rely on certain tools to engage in the community.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/w83w2p/vr_social_gaming_platform_vrchat_implements_eac/
Yeah no definitely. I just thought the needless and obligatory 1984 ref was funny.
Easy AntiCheat does fucking suck though, specifically because it bricks any game with it from running on Linux
People being dicks basically. Like this isn't cheating as in aimbotting in Counter Strike, it's more like TF2 cheating where the only goal is to try and make the game unplayable. People basically write malicious clients that can crash other people's games and servers and stuff like that.
anti cheat seems like a bad workaround way to fix their bad security for the server / clients
Since their game is carried by creators anyway, I think it's dumb they won't just embrace it and create an API to regulate it through or something.
Btw a free and open source federated vrchat like social vr game would be really cool. But I am just a dumbass who hasn't learned 2 code
OpenSimulator has been around since 2007. It doesn't have federation in the sense that servers freely send and receive content and VR compatibility isn't built into most clients, but it works as an open standard, and could use a lot of support toward that end.
