This update has not been officially covered or acknowledged by AltSpaceVR or Microsoft. So be sure to read the official news channels for confirmation of these changes. Thoughts expressed in this article and attached are my own.
Why have some of the featured kits have been removed?
In recent days the metaverse has become more of a trending topic on the internet after the company ‘Meta’ otherwise formally known as FaceBook pivoted their company’s mission into providing funding and support towards building the metaverse. Although FaceBook/Meta are developing their own platform for social VR they want to make it possible for you to take your content with you and that it isn’t tied to one platform.
Politics aside about FaceBook’s plans the announcement has risen a stir in the developer community as there are hundreds of asset stores online including the Unity asset store and content that could potentially be imported into a VR/metaverse.
From the developer’s point of view: If I was to buy a $30 low poly city pack I have the right to use it for one project/game. Already it is a grey area as technically I could have purchased it for the purpose to use it on AltSpaceVR as one entity. The problem is that people typically share templates and kits of purchased assets and even though they are still on the platform of AltSpace – the consecutive user did not pay a cent towards the original developer who created those assets.
The bottom line is the developers miss out on potential profit because ideally, each user who wants to use the low poly city pack would need to purchase it for themselves.
Example of license agreements being changed post Meta announcement
One company that you would recognise their assets from have updated their terms and conditions on a recently released package called Sci-Fi Worlds pack.
I have barely anything to build with now, what can I do?
Join groups on AltVR.com
Recently AltSpace has enabled people to create public groups. These groups organise lists of users which prior to this update was mainly used to allow Patreon owners and hosts to keep track of user access. Now you can create and join public groups, there isn’t many there but I am sure this change will motivate a drive to have pages of kits to opt-in for.
