VRChat is celebrating its 5th anniversary today! Come and celebrate five years of memories with us. While it’s been a little less than two years since we went live on Steam, VRChat has a much deeper history.
VRChat was created in a college dorm by our CEO, Graham. Soon after, he met our co-founder, Jesse, and for years worked with a small but passionate community to form VRChat into what it is today.
VRChat 5th Anniversary Event
Thanks to community member Squid, this year we’ll be celebrating our fifth anniversary in the original cafe. We’ll have the classic Karl avatar in T-pose so you can relive the beginnings of VRChat. We’ll also have some videos highlighting what it was like being in VRChat in the early days. The world will be open starting Tuesday the 15th and the party will be happening on Saturday across multiple instances. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!
Where: “Old VRChat Cafe”
When: World opens Tuesday Jan 15, 2019. Party is Saturday Jan 19, 2019 at 7pm PST.
Early Days: The Age of Karl
Many things that exist in VRChat nowadays simply did not exist in the early days of VRChat. For instance, everyone would congregate in one room, a now deprecated cafe demo scene from the Unity Asset Store. There was no sitting implemented yet, and there was only one avatar, “Karl”. People couldn’t even move their arms or legs, so they just hovered around the room, T-posing as Karl and talking to other Karls. The topic of conversation usually revolved around the future of VR.
Eventually the community got tired of Karl. Some remained as Karl, while others thought “surely, there’s more than just Karl out there”. Since custom avatar creation would not exist for another year, pressure grew on the founders to bring in more avatar choices. Finally a grand 4 other avatars were added, and the age of Karl was brought to an end.
VRChat’s First Birthday Party: The Art Gallery
Things were looking up. The community had 5 avatars to choose from and now two worlds to go between. The new world, The Art Gallery, was the new hip spot for the small community to gather. Many devs from the VR industry would come to hang out in this space, including Palmer Luckey. The Art Gallery featured many pieces of artwork, including some of the first VRChat memes and inside jokes.
The community was still in its infancy. Our first birthday party had about 40 people in attendance, and at the time, that was a huge amount of users. Some were now enjoying being able to move their arms around using early motion controllers.
The Sunday Meetups & Gunters Universe
A year later, VRChat is living through its second year. The community is still small, but growing steadily. One of the largest events weekly was Gunter’s Universe. For the unaware, Gunter’s Universe is the longest running talk show in Virtual Reality, and it is still going on today. Every week Gunter (now a VRChat team member) would interview a different guest from the VR industry. He was accompanied in the past by a nefarious cat named Mr. Whiskers, who would sometimes cause mischief during the show.
Unlike now with over a hundred public worlds submitted per day, this period in VRChat saw at most 10–20 worlds submitted per week. Most of the community would gather once a week to tour new worlds together. At these meetings they would also form a circle and share updates about their lives. This practice continued up to the days leading to the Steam launch.
In closing, we’d like to offer a huge thanks to the entire VRChat Community. The community and friendships created within are what makes VRChat special. You are forging the future of VRChat. Here’s to another 5 years and beyond!
