Lock ability to make derivatives
This would be helpful for people who would wish to share their characters with the userbase but would not like people to alter their characters.
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vote sum by 6 users.
Suggestion status
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It would help prevent some toxic users collecting and resubmitting characters as their own.
I'm not sure how to feel about this topic. Any restrictions we'd add would eventually be possible to circumvent anyway. So in that sense, having an option to prevent others from modifying a character would only give a false sense of security. I'm not sure I wanna shoulder that responsibility.
Any uploaded derivatives are filtered out by default. You have to actually check the "Include derived" box before they become visible in the feed.
It's my understanding that VRChat has struggled with the issue of stolen avatars for years, and they haven't come close to a permanent solution.
Locking derivatives on uploads would set a precedent and give the author the ability to say "hey, i'd love it if you didn't rip this off" but that's the best you can do.
Once you've uploaded a character and let people preview it, someone determined enough will find a way to rip it off.
Just because it can be circumvented does not mean mitigation shouldn't be attempted. As an analogy, just because software piracy is inevitable, that doesn't mean DRM is a waste of time.
That being said, I understand the feeling of responsibility that comes from implementing something like that. You're effectively making a promise to users that it's infallible, which it's not. Nothing ever is.
I do agree with @SugarRainbowLove in that it at least sets precedent. If a user has to go out of their way to hack mutability back into a file, they must be aware that they're trying to circumvent copyright (or at least intended behaviour/ToS) in some way.