The transaction fee's are too damn high.
Technocrat
VRChat’s ~15% creator transaction fee feels calibrated for a mature marketplace, not an emerging economy that should be prioritizing growth, circulation, and reinvestment. The problem isn’t simply that creators receive less money; it’s that taxing every transaction heavily reduces the purchasing power of earned Credits each time they move from one creator to another, shortening the chain of economic activity those Credits can generate. A better model would be to make creator-to-creator spending of earned Credits very cheap ( like 0–5% ) while charging a larger fee when creators cash out into real currency. That would encourage creators to reinvest their earnings into artists, world builders, performers, assets, and other services inside VRChat, increasing transaction volume, specialization, and economic density without preventing VRChat from monetizing the system. Even for the investors' perspective, the goal should be to maximize the size and velocity of the VRChat economy first, rather than maximizing the take rate on the relatively small economy that exists today.
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You mention the following:
> A better model would be to make creator-to-creator spending of earned Credits very cheap
Creator-to-creator transactions aren't supported (yet). Do you think VRChat would have to introduce creator-to-creator (or user-to-user) transactions first? Or are you referring to something else?
Technocrat
Fax Thanks for the quick response.
In theory, a universal reduction in the transaction rate would be equally beneficial. It would simply cost VRChat more near-term revenue, whereas preferential treatment for Earned Credits would be a more conservative way to test the circulation thesis.
I’m also assuming that spending already-earned Credits internally does not incur the same payment-processing costs as purchasing Credits with fiat or cashing them out, since no external payment is occurring at that step. If that assumption is wrong, I’d be interested to know what costs are actually being covered by the ~15% fee.
So to answer your question directly: no, I don’t think direct creator-to-creator transfers would need to be introduced first. A sufficiently low transaction rate would already enable creator-to-creator commerce through the existing marketplace, since creators could spend their Earned Credits purchasing from each other’s markets with very little value lost at each step.