VRChat’s new anti-cheat has banned mods, causing community backlash

VRChat developer VRChat Inc. has announced plans to introduce anti-cheat detection. The next update will add support for Easy Anti-Cheat, a popular cheat detection tool used in a variety of games. The addition of anti-cheat is usually a good thing, but in this instance, it’s causing a problematic side effect. Once Easy Anti-Cheat is live, using mods on VRChat will be a bannable offense.

Mods are an important part of VRChat that have been used for years. Some of these mods are just for fun, but others are essential for players to enjoy the game. For example, one of the mods affected is VRC-CC. This mod adds closed captions to movie worlds so people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing can still enjoy movies with their friends. It’s an essential accessibility mod that was created because the vanilla game doesn’t offer an equivalent.

It isn’t just accessibility that will be reduced due to VRChat receiving Easy Anti-cheat support. A lot of quality-of-life mods will no longer be usable either. For instance, the Personal Mirror mod was useful for calibrating models and testing out expressions. There are also mods that hide other players based on their distance from you, which improves performance in crowded rooms.

The removal of mods has not gone down well. VRChat‘s recent reviews on Steam are “Overwhelmingly Negative.” VRChat Inc responded to the complaints by acknowledging that “modified client features that are being lost due to this are extremely important.” However, the developer makes it clear that it will still release the update.

Changing the roadmap

Even though Easy Anti-cheat is still coming to VRChat there is some good news. VRChat Inc is restructuring its development roadmap to specifically focus on adding key features that this update will remove. It didn’t provide any specifics, but the statement says that the developer is speaking with communities focused on accessibility.

@VRChat “VRC-CC” is a mod that adds closed captions to movie worlds so deaf/HH people can watch movies with their friends. VRChat is killing that today by banning all mods. They’ve done absolutely nothing to address serious accessibility gaps on their platform. Please RT pic.twitter.com/DuJSUJCb4n

— Foxipso (@TheFoxipso) July 25, 2022