One of the integrated VTubing services, which contained a proprietary avatar creator that fed right into their own vtuber tools and ecosystem, is shutting down. V-Katsu, Illusion's entry into the vtubing space, is shutting down at the end of June.
The V-Katsu avatar creator and all the related services are shutting down, and there won't be an export tool of any kind - they're keeping everyone locked-in to the very end, and when the service goes, the avatars go with it.
It's a hot topic in the JP Vtubing world right now, because along with that announcement, they also announced changes to their Terms of Service, and they're extremely not good for anyone who was using V-Katsu.
Basically, the new TOS says that no one will be able to use anything containing a V-Katsu model after the shutdown. They're not even allowed to post images or videos containing their V-Katsu avatar after the shutdown. They can leave up images and videos they've already made, but posting new ones after June 30th is prohibited. Who knows how hard it'll actually be enforced in practice, but such a strong stance against it is likely to discourage people from trying to circumvent the shutdown or kludge the avatar into some other software.
It's a major wake-up call to anyone using one of these integrated services. I think folks knew there were some risks to using a service with such strong lock-in, but I don't think anyone expected them to issue a "FUCK YOU" of this degree on their way out. Especially not the V-Katsu users, who now have just six months to get themselves a new avatar before they're locked out of their current ones forever. Seems like riggers and modelers are gonna get even busier this year!
