Dangerous Hackers?

[TheShadowHatter]

Last night I played with 2 of my friends and this random dude speaking spanish came up talking crap. Somehow, out of nowhere, my VR set shuts down, and I lift my visor to see I got ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BLUE SCREENED out of nowhere. My PC ran a CHKDSK and Blue Screened, then CHKDSK 2 more times before I went to be (so it could have ran more times idk) until things were finally back to normal.

Anybody know what the ♥♥♥♥ happened? is this a hacker script or maybe an avatar was altered to make abusive tools or something? My friend told me it was a hacker but I'm trying to wrap my head around what happened. ♥♥♥♥ sucks man I don't want to avoid public worlds since I don't have enough active friends to realistically be able to do it.

[Captainblu]

Rip my dude same thing happened to one of my firends but he was on destop mode

[JDumbz]

Can confirm this has happened to me as well.

[SuperGlizzy23]

Same here :/ Apparently people have crash particles.

[Alfred Pennyworth]

There's a lot of crashers on the game. That's one of the rare crashes that BSODs people and its increasing more and more. They shoot your RAM usage to 32 gbs

[TheShadowHatter]

Damn this sucks ass man. I really don't want to resort to private worlds. I hate that I'm essentially giving those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the attention they want but at the same time what kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up mindset do you have to have to be a hacker in a social mmo that has ZERO benefits to it? of course it's a rhetorical question but I just want to vent because ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this sucks.

[Milo_Temesvar]

People, read Snow Crash. It's a novel, it's very good, it's topic related. There's even an audiobook version. Please go read it.

[Phazon Xenomorph]

Despite I'd love to play this again, it's these crashes which cause PC errors, because some people think it's hilarious to crash and damage peoples computers, that keep me from logging in and chatting with those I wanted to.

[Johnny Crash]

This game should be taken down from steam. THe devs are a bunch of useless pricks. Unsell your are a streamer, they wont help you, you will get crashed, hackers will crash your gpu or kill your hardware with shaders and steal your stuff. This game should either be quitted or taken down from steam, cuz they are not updating anything.

[Ae]

They can't kill your PC or break your parts, you fear mongering fools. In the case of the OP, shutting the game down by force probably caused a SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED BSOD, which isn't terribly uncommon.
Don't worry about hackers too much. The worst thing that can happen is getting your game crashed.

"B-b-bbut stop defending the devs" I'm not. This is pretty unacceptable that it's even possible. But being fearmongerers like you guys are doesn't help either.
Also the gall some of you guys have ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about a free game. The devs are doing what they have to, these things aren't that simple to fix.

[TheShadowHatter]

Yeah wasn't too keen on people bashing VRChat just because of the hackers. VRChat has been one of my most favorite games of all time. I've made some great friends playing this game and the ability to explore different worlds and feel immersed in them brings me to tears at times (especially playing .hack// worlds). I love this game and I'm glad it exists and it's to the point that it's the ONLY game I ever play with my Oculus Rift. I just want the devs to find a way to fight these hackers by disabling some ways the avatars can cause me to crash/blue screen and I'll be happy.

My favorite thing about VRChat is going to public worlds and meeting new friends. I just want to keep doing that.

[Phazon Xenomorph]

VR Chat is great, don't get me wrong, but this is 2018, there shouldn't be that many easy vulnerabilities for people to crash your system like that. If making crash particle bombs that spike ram / gpu vram usage to BSOD your game is a problem, then the particles for EVERYONE need to be strictly limited until a better fix is in place. It's no fun whether you choose to run around with an anime skin that triggers people, or a dead meme skin that triggers people, or just something they plain don't like... but the fact others can have that kind of power over your hardware is disgusting.

[TheShadowHatter]

That I agree with. I wouldn't be mad if particles were limited since there's way too much power right now for people to crash the client and even PCs and it's dangerous.

[Ae]

The particles were limited a while back. The backlash was major enough for them to revert it pretty quickly.

[Phazon Xenomorph]

Originally posted by Ae:

The particles were limited a while back. The backlash was major enough for them to revert it pretty quickly.

Did they revert it? Cause either way that's the problem. If anyone has a problem with the way you sound, look, or whatever, they'll just crash you and there's NOTHING you can do about it. Hiding in private worlds talking to people you already know isn't the answer when you go out wanting to meet new people to discuss a subject.

I could use a damn Samus skin from the Metroid world but if someone hates Metroid or Nintendo then they'll just crash me with a particle bomb, I have zero control over it happening until it happens. I can't even block or ignore or report the guy cause I'm just instantly on my desktop getting a warning from Windows about system memory, or from my video card about a driver crash, or just straight to BSOD.

Who cares about the people not liking particles gone, get rid of them I say UNTIL the problem is actually fixed.

[Sinon]

I want to start out by saying; It's easy to identify a scriper/hacker before they do anything that gives away that they're hacking. I can tell by how they act, how they talk, or how they move around.
Once you identify the attention seeker, you can take those extra few seconds or minutes to either:

1. Enable safe mode
   
2. Block said user.

It's not rocket science. Just don't answer "yes" to any questions like "Want to get yeeted?" and instead block them/safe mode it.
Onto the rest of the wall.

Originally posted by Angus McFife XIII:

Lastly, why not have a "particle limiter" that's client side?

Something like this exists, and usually will help keep you from crashing to lower grade particle crashes (if configured correctly, can personally confirm this). You can find a tutorial from a dev explaining how to enable it and customize it here[docs.vrchat.com].

Beyond that though, I must go onto a limb here and say that no hardware damage is possible though current crashes. (unless you leave the game running during and/or after being crashed, in which case, your fault. Task Manager exists for a reason.)
Personally, I have yet to encounter any crashes that abuse your ram to to point of blue screening, but I won't deny the possibility of it.

Hope yall can excuse me jumping in here, I recommended enabling the above particle limiter, it might help keep you in-game longer, atleast until the devs actually implement a "report" button.