Devs Unleash Hell on Steam; VRChat Review Bombed to Oblivion [UPDATED]
VRChat has fallen victim to aggressive reviev bombing. All because of the implementation of the Easy Anti-Cheat solution.
Update
Developers of VRChat have published another post, in which they announced the changes that will be made to the game. The developers are still sticking to their decision to use Easy Anti-Cheat and will not abandon it.
Instead, they intend to make some improvements to the game in the near future. Among them will be the ability to manipulate the horizon, a movable menu or more graphic options (such as a mode for people with color blindness).
However, it is not too likely that these changes will appease the players. After all, the aforementioned features have been available for a long time thanks to mods. In turn, the developers still have not announced the implementation of such repeatedly mentioned mechanisms as speech-to-text transcription.
Original news
VRChat has been a really well-liked app for a long time. On Steam you can find a whole lot of positive reviews of the title. Recently, however, the situation has took a drastic turn.
The game has fallen victim to a massive review bombing, which was caused by a controversial change introduced by the developers.
Controversial patch
On July 25 VRChat received a new update. It probably would not have aroused much interest, if not for the fact that along with it Easy Anti-Cheat was implemented into the game.
This tool is used by many developers to combat cheaters in online games. In the case of VRChat however, the purpose of its introduction was something completely different.
The game has long boasted quite a number of mods created with it in mind. This is quite an interesting situation, because officially using mods with the game is forbidden.
However, the developers turned a blind eye on the work of modders, and this work greatly enriched their creation. After all, the base game lacked many important features, such as accessibility options (such as speech-to-text transcription). The mods improved VRChat also with many quality-of-life changes and increased stability.
Suddenly, the developers decided however, to enforce a total ban. According to them, mods generate more problems than benefits. They are to be responsible for account thefts, crashes, stalking players and many other offenses.
In addition, each modification is an additional burden for developers. They have to constantly repair the damage caused by player creations, which is supposed to be a big problem for the team.
The solution to the trouble, therefore, is the introduction of the aforementioned Easy Anti-Cheat. This tool made it impossible to use any mods.
Players don't want Easy Anti-Cheat
The decision, to put it mildly, upset players. A storm of epic proportions broke out in the VRChat community, and Discord and the game's social media were flooded with negative comments. The game also fell victim to massive review bombing on Steam.
According to most fans of the title, the decision to ban mods is a shot in the knee for the developers. The move is expected to be detrimental to all players, especially those who are simply unable to play without special modifications.
Many people have also suggested that VRChat just got rid of the element that made the game so popular. Now the game is no longer interesting to them.
"[Developers] of VRChat have shown that they don't want to listen to the community and will make changes no matter how it negatively affects users of their game, especially considering the blocking of mods that offered accessibility options for the mute, deaf and otherwise limited, as well as changes from under the Quality of Life label, which they themselves did not intend to make," Digichip
"The implementation of Easy Anti-Cheat on paper doesn't sound bad, as the game has a significant problem with hackers, but in reality it will cause more harm than good. People who would like to increase stability, protect themselves from crawlers and hackers, and even people who need accessibility options to simply play the game, will now not be able to do so," Sergeant Sprinkles
"Introducing an Anti-Cheat system to a social platform makes no sense, after all, no one will use cheats when interacting with people. And if you care about stopping stalking and harassment then this solution will not work, because people will still be able to insult and harass others," Wraithslayer58
Developers promise fixes
Quite incomprehensible for players is also the developers' response to the growing controversy. They immediately announced that they do not intend to withdraw from the implementation of Easy Anti-Cheat.
Instead they promised to introduce improvements and new accessibility options to the game. The same ones that have been present in the game for a long time thanks to mods. This time, however, players will have to wait for the developers to make and reimplement them.
Moreover, this will affect the developers' previous intentions. After all, they confessed that they had to completely change their plans for the development of VRChat. So the priority now is to create features that were already available, and new content has receded into the background.
It's easy to guess what players' opinion on the issue is. Most of them consider the move nonsensical. However, the developers do not intend to give way.
