Content Creators Encounter Witch-Hunt

ArtsyVRC (on the left) posing for a photoshoot. Screenshot taken by Pan Diman.

Lately, Twitter got filled with “vague” comments on the current situation with Twitch and different kinds of things presented by streamers, mostly addressing explicit content that might be a minor threat to VRChat.

This week, in order to see if anyone knows what’s causing this wave of “witch hunters” on social media, we decided to ask ArtsyVRC, a content creator known for their “controversial decisions” that involved work on suggestive content in the past.

“Oh yeah, there was a lot of vague tweets happening,” Artsy said. “I’m a bit involved in the topic, so I’m mostly active around trying to prevent community-wide policing by certain creators/fanbases who are 'approving' and 'disapproving' certain creators, since I think that's dangerous, ‘cause there is no limit or line, and purely on opinion and fear of their game/supported streamers losing viewers or getting banned.”

However, Artsy admitted that her/his recent tweets aren’t related to the latest events at all. Still, we asked them if this means that someone is producing R-rated content, to which Artsy replied, “Not at all. It's more around the argument that streamers have somewhat 'suggestive' content on stream at times. Though the larger streamers who have done that have been monitored by Twitch and VRChat devs, and they both have done no moderative action against said channel. They were partnered during it, and one event was heavily monitored by VRC devs. It was expected for them to get suspended, but it just never happened. So it's this very weird kind of situation where there is talk about 'not supporting' certain people.”

Still, this kind of movement against prohibited content shouldn’t be unusual for VRChat, as the community is aware of the situation and people are afraid of the possibility that VRChat might turn into another Second Life and get banned from Twitch.

While discussing a similar issue with the recently discovered dating site for VRC users who might be crossing the line, Zarniwoop said, “Just worried they will make VRChat get the same reputation that plagues Second Life.”