TLDR: Very Poor avatars should never be accepted onto the marketplace. No case by case exceptions. Ideally, Very Poor listings accepted during the marketplace's early lenient period should get a fixed window to publish an optimized update or become unpurchasable. Existing buyers keep everything they bought, in the exact version they bought.

The problem isn't just performance, it's stressful ambiguity

Staff have described Very Poor submissions as reviewed case by case, with most rejected. Nobody can tell a creator in advance which ones will qualify.

That turns every ambitious avatar into a gamble. A flagship avatar takes weeks to months to build, sometimes over half a year. Under a case by case policy, a creator has exactly two options: build within the performance limits and be certain of acceptance but permanently capped on features, or build the feature rich avatar customers actually want and bet the entire investment on an unwritten standard. That is stressful, it wastes creator and reviewer time, and it hands a category defining advantage to whoever happens to win the gamble, because an accepted Very Poor competes with strictly more freedom (more PhysBones, more toggles, more outfits, smoother geometry) than everyone else is allowed. The stress is compounded by the fact that not all 3D work is reversible. Sometimes optimization is destructive.

And to be clear about buyer behavior: performance rank is effectively invisible at the point of purchase. Customers buy on looks, toggles, and customization, and they will happily buy a Very Poor. That is exactly why allowing even rare ones distorts an entire category around them. Proof? The top sellers on every major external marketplace.

Legacy exceptions compound forever

Avatars accepted during the marketplace's lenient launch window still hold top positions today. Example: the current top seller in the Japanese anime category, uploaded late 2025 at roughly 140k triangles against the 70k limit, and well past the PhysBone limits.

To be clear, this isn't about that seller or that avatar. They uploaded under the rules of the time. This is about what a single exception does to a sales ranked category.

Sales ranked sorting means sales drive visibility, and visibility drives more sales. An exception granted at launch doesn't just get a head start. It structurally locks the top of the category in a way later creators can never contest, even in principle. And yes, part of that position is early mover timing rather than the performance freedom itself, but that's exactly the point: the two compound, which is why an exception granted at launch is effectively permanent and unfair.

Why "it only happens in extremely rare cases" doesn't fix this

The unfairness of an exception regime scales with its ambiguity, not its frequency. As long as one path exists, every serious creator has to factor the gamble into every build decision, and every acceptance reopens the question of "why that one and not mine?" A hard line ends the gamble, the regret, and the wasted review cycles all at once, and it levels the playing field for everyone.

Proposal

Primary ask: publish a hard rule. Very Poor avatars are not accepted. Full stop. No case by case review, no exceptions on performance rank. Acceptance on performance should be 100% predictable before a single polygon is modeled.

Secondary ask (I know this is a bigger ask): sunset legacy Very Poor listings. Give existing Very Poor listings a fixed window (e.g. 90 days) to publish an update that meets the performance requirement. Listings that don't update become unpurchasable. Nothing is revoked. Buyers who already own the avatar keep it permanently, in its original state.

Anticipated objections

"Those sellers followed the rules of their time." True, which is why this proposes an update window and full access for existing buyers, not sudden removal.

"Buyers want feature rich avatars: a hard cap sends them to external stores." External stores review nothing and require uploading via Unity and a working PC. The official marketplace's differentiator is trust, ease of access, and automatic updates, as well as avatars that work out of the box and don't tank a lobby's framerate. A marketplace selling Very Poors underwrites the exact problem VRChat's own performance rank system exists to prevent.

"This limits ambitious creators." It equalizes them. When the ceiling is identical and known in advance, ambition goes into design and optimization, where the best creators already put it, instead of into guessing what a reviewer might allow.

Who benefits

Creators get predictability, no wasted builds, and rankings decided by craft under equal rules. Buyers get avatars that perform. Reviewers see fewer submissions that are doomed eitherway, because a hard line stops them from being built in the first place. And VRChat gets top charts that reflect quality instead of timing and exceptions.