Summary and personal opinion - December 2025

Long story short: Most creators do not really try to optimize anything. The performance data suggests that, in most cases, the main versions are not optimized, and additional optimized variants are rarely provided. I am aware of the fact that this market is mainly dominated by hobbyists and non/semi-professionals, but the point still stands. Nobody expects everything to be perfectly optimized — but at least some effort could be made to improve things. I've read through shop pages stating things like: "Yeh, this avi is poorly optimized so don't use it in public lobbies" or "I tried to reduce texture memory but I don't know how. You can do it yourself" — and many more like this. Also some more curious things like: "BC you degenerates kept asking, this avi now has SPS. Go and enjoy it, perverts." But, I digress.
Given that most listings don't even show any performance stats, combined with the many pre-rendered images that do not represent how the avatar will actually look, I personally see this as bad practice and potentially misleading since customers do not exactly know what they are buying.
Another point that came across my mind is a bit of a paradox — you have a lot of choice while at the same time you don't. There are basically four or five subcategories most avatars can be put into regarding their style (not referring to the "categories" in this evaluation). There are so many that look alike or even almost identical. Also, the lack of "normal"-looking male avatars is limiting choice. And don't get me started on the oversexualized part of the story. It really seems that creativity starts to be washed out by money. Bending your work towards what most people are buying reduces uniqueness in favor of profit. Many are starting to follow that path and are getting less and less indistinguishable from each other.

Some quotes I picked up so far working on this project:
"Why should I optimize an avatar when the optimized avatar is supposed to look the same as the original but with fewer features? I could use this time to work on the next one."
"Why should I not make all my avis 90% naked if this is what people want?"
"People don't care about performance, so why should I (as creator)?"

Regardless, there are creators out there, who pay attention on performance and optimize their creations or provide additional optimized versions. And those avatars are performing much better in game while still offering a lot. The issue is that only a small amount of creators actually does this. For a customer browsing the store this difference is often not visible on first sight. Im my opinion there should be a larger push in the direction, that optimization is a part of the process, not just an extra step only the daring take. But if asked how to make this push... I do not know. During this year (2025) I saw an increasing number of people taking about this issue and many also sharing ideas on how to improove. However, for most people this topic is still not relevant even if it influences their in game experience. Maybe projects like this can make more people aware of this situation and help spreading the word.

Another thing I noticed:
There is a slowly increasing number of creators releasing unfinished work in terms of missing versions, showcases or other content that is announced to be added soon. I've checked several listings that promised missing content by a specific date. For example it was stated that, an opti version would be released in mid-October '25. When I checked again at the beginning of December '25, the opti version still wasn't there, even though the promise remained in the product description. This wasn't the only case where creators failed to deliver promised content on time — or at all. Some simply move on to new projects without finishing the old ones. That's something worth keeping in mind when deciding whether to purchase an avatar. And my personal tip: “Don't buy products that look unfinished or openly admit to being unfinished. Chances are high they'll never be completed.”

The (VRChat) Avatar Marketplace

In general, I think VRChat's own marketplace is a good idea. It certainly has its flaws (to me, the implementation feels rushed and not very well thought out), but when it comes to forcing creators to optimize, it results in a much better average avatar performance. Do I think enforcing optimization is good? Absolutely not. Do I think enforcing it is necessary? No — at least, it shouldn't be. In my opinion, polishing and optimization should be demanded by players (customers) in the beginning. As long as it takes for those practices to become standart. In the VRChat marketplace, the performance rank is displayed next to the avatar in a way that uploaders cannot influence it (except by actually optimizing the avatar itself). Over the last few months, voices have grown louder demanding similar features for third-party marketplaces, especially for Jinxxy. I am strongly in favor of that. Options like “filter by performance” or “sort by performance rank” could be added. Spotlighting things like “Best-selling optimized avatars of the week” could also help push creators toward polishing their work. I do understand that avatars with more features tend to sell better, as they appeal to a wider audience. However, there are limits. At a certain point, splitting an avatar into two versions or making it modular should be considered. The latter, in particular, can help a lot by allowing unwanted features to be removed before uploading. However, this does require a bit more effort from the customer in Unity. There are pros and cons to all of these ideas. The important part is to have them — and to try them — to see what actually works.

One word about Kitbashing

Kitbashing (aka the assembly of an avatar using assets made by other creators) is often seen as bad practice. But in reality, it reallly depends on how things are set up. Kitbashing can be a bad practice, if the parts are not integrated in the project properly. Just smashing stuff together without optimizing will lead to an avatar performing extremely poor without any to the cutomer apparent reason. But if things are done right, assets are properly integrated, unnecessary geometry is removed, materials a merged, textueres are combined or downscaled, etc. Put simply: things are optimized. Kitbashing in this context is actually not a bad thing. Creators can acchive results that they otherwise wouldn't be able to because not everybody can model for example a humanoid body from scratch. That is what such assets are here for. And if time progresses a creator's skills usually get better. And maybe at some point they will start digging deeper into the matter comming up with 100% form scatch models - which in my optinion is a good goal to work towards as an avatar creator.