VRChat to Implement Easy Anti-Cheat, Barring the Use of Modded Clients

A move that has drawn significant criticism from the community.

VRChat will receive what is possibly one of its most controversial patches in the next few days. According to a new blog post released by the game’s developer, VRChat will now implement the Easy Anti-Cheat program to permanently bar the use of modded clients. Developer VRChat, Inc. has stated that the decision to implement EAC comes from wanting to protect users, as “modified clients” have become a huge problem for VRChat in many ways.

With the EAC implementation, modified clients of VRChat will be blocked. Here’s a snippet of what EAC will combat once it’s fully integrated into VRChat:

Malicious client modifications are responsible for a massive amount of issues for both our team and our users. We’ve been listening to you cry out for a solution to being harassed, griefed, and constantly crashed, so we’re taking further steps to address one of the roots of the problem. Every month, thousands of users have their accounts stolen, often due to running a modified client that is silently logging their keystrokes as well as other information. These users – often without even realizing it! – run the risk of losing their account, or having their computers become part of a larger botnet.

While the developer wants to protect its users from various hackers, the decision to implement EAC has not gone over that well within the community. At the time of writing, VRChat is currently experiencing a surge of negative reviews in its home platform Steam, where players are quite unhappy that they will not be able to modify the game as they please.

The players’ issues with EAC’s implementation are quite understandable as well. Besides barring client modification, EAC will also stop the use of the most harmless mods, which have been a focal selling point in the VRChat community. Indeed, it has been the main draw of the social game, one that makes it more popular than its competitors, such as Facebook’s own Metaverse. The disappearance of its customizability is a serious point of contention amongst the community and something the developers will most likely see a significant backlash on.

VRChat is currently…