Creator Roadmap - AMA with Dan and Manuel [Jan 24, 2024]

Since we previewed decorators a few years back, we’ve taken a step back to think about how we can support these in a more general framework. We are currently gathering feedback and working on a plan for a unified, scalable, and flexible system that works for everything from smaller objects like grass to larger ones like forests. Given other priorities this year, we don’t anticipate these improvements arriving until next year.

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Thank you very much for the feedback - we hear you loud and clear. We are committed to communicating more frequently. First of all, we aim to publish a vision and strategy post about discovery products (Home, Search, Discover, Matchmaking, and Notifications) in February, which will kick off a series of related deep-dive blog posts and dialogues with our developer community. Secondly, we are committed to offer more Search & Discovery focused AMAs, similar to this session.

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We’re making improvements to the Marketplace both in terms of UI and search and discovery for an improved shopping experience. As we make these updates, we will be communicating with creators so you can better understand how items are ranked.

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Thank you for the question. We’re looking at further customization options and how to build a much more robust procedural placement/set dressing system, but we have no plans to announce at this time.

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Please refer to the answer here.

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Self-service experience ownership transfer will launch in the second half of the year. Group to group transfers are actually available today. Instructions for the current process can be found here.

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We’re aiming for Q1, but we don’t think EditableImage will solve the issue for you, since those images will not be replicated. We are tracking your image compression bug internally but have no update right now.

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We have plans to open UGC creation for all users in the first half of 2024, and no application will be needed. Therefore we are not accepting new creators into the UGC program, as in the future everyone will be able to create, publish and sell their creations.

When we open up creation, we will require Premium 1000 or 2200 and ID verification tied to an account to improve accountability and support adherence to community guidelines. This month, we have already started requiring UGC Program members to also ID verify and subscribe to Premium 1000 or 2200 in order to upload, sell/publish, and earn from Marketplace as either an individual or as a group.

See more details here.

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Adding support for a new platform requires significant resources across the company to not only make sure the first version works well on the new platform but that every new release continues to support the platform. Right now, we have no plans for Linux/Steamdeck support.

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There has been a lot of work to improve our reliability and so far (knock on wood!) we are pleased with the results. Efforts to get here include notable improvements to our core infrastructure layers (how we deploy and manage servers, our instrumentation of all services, our storage systems, and our networking systems), as well as a regular cadence of stress testing key services on the platform, and overall improvements to the readiness of teams to respond to issues if they do start to occur. Note though, we’re not done yet and expect even more progress on reliability over the course of 2024.

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Thank you for your feedback. This is not currently on our roadmap, but we always appreciate hearing community feature requests like this.

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Server authority remains on our long-term roadmap and we agree that is the ultimate way to address these issues. Our current focus in this space is in providing tools, like our upcoming ban API, so that creators can more effectively moderate their own communities.

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We are working on adding coloring to SurfaceAppearance and aim to release it later this year. Emission maps are still on our longer-term roadmaps, but we are not actively working on them now. Our primary focus for lighting is bringing Future is Bright to Android and releasing our new GPU Lightgrid system. This will bring high-fidelity lighting to a wide range of devices at a higher level of performance than we have today. We are not currently working on adding alpha support.

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We are working towards having proper font support for all 16 of the standard languages we support, but I don’t have a specific timeline for Vietnamese. Early last year we added right-to-left text support which includes Arabic support, so that is already available.

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We do not have immediate plans to increase server memory, but we are working to improve memory efficiency which will let you do more with the current allocations. Longer term we will of course be increasing server memory, but I don’t have any concrete timeline on this.

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Unfortunately, we’ve had to prioritize other critical work so we could focus on creator pain points like performance, lighting, and terrain improvements. The cloud features are currently on hold, but we will let the community know when that changes.

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Thank you for your question. We constantly review floor prices to support a healthy and growing marketplace economy. We recently made an update to price floors for avatar bodies and heads and are seeing positive results. We plan to do more of these in support of the ecosystem.

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Yes, with the Audio API, there will be options that provide more control over voice, allowing you to implement changes like fine-tuning distance attenuation, building features like walkie-talkies, and enabling non-spatialized voice.

For avatar tooling, we do not currently have plans to support bone drivers and constraints on imported armatures. If you can expand on your feature request though, we’re happy to consider it!

Lastly– for the powerful search and browse capabilities we outlined in the Creator Roadmap– those are in reference to the homepage and experience discovery. Not all of them are applicable to Marketplace, but we do plan to improve the discovery and usability of avatar items. This includes algorithm, UX, and interface improvements to help with discovery and navigation.

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Please refer to our answer here.

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Thank you for the question. This is not currently on our roadmap.

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