#secondlike

[checkyourrealityevo]

IMVU: NUMBER ONE 3D CHAT OR NUMBER ONE CHEAT?

Let me begin this article by saying that I was very hesitant to write it. Mainly because this is not what Reality Check does. But after talking extensively with the subject and doing some further investigation, it intrigued me enough to tackle it.

Let us begin with some context, the subject of the article is about an IMVU user named YukuS, age 35.

For those who do not know what IMVU is, IMVU Inc., is an online metaverse and social game. IMVU was founded in 2004 and was originally backed by venture investors Menlo Ventures, AllegisCyber Capital, Bridgescale Partners, and Best Buy Capital. IMVU members use 3D avatars to meet new people, chat, create, and play games.

It was apparently one of the foundations of 3D chat much like Second life which came after it.

Sixteen years later it is still the number one 3D App on the market.

Now that we know who IMVU is, let me introduce YukuS.

YukuS (her username) became a member of IMVU in 2006. A couple of months later she became what is called a developer.

A developer on IMVU is someone who creates content for other members to use. This can be clothing, pets, apartments, scenery, you name it. When other users create this content, developers get credit which can be used to buy content on IMVU, music, and even exchanged for actual cash.

YukuS had created a substantial amount of content, and by her omission accumulated a substantial amount of credit (by her estimate over one million). She also forged various friendships over the years. From college to her mid-twenties she was an avid user of the IMVU platform.

But like all things, real life stepped in. YukuS got a real job and took part in the real world. IMVU had to take a backseat. But from time to time as she explained it, YukuS would go on and say hi to old friends, make new ones, and then use her years of hard earned credits from content she painstakingly created to go and purchase other content for her avatar.

This is the part of the story where we come to the plot.

YukuS like many of us found herself confined to her home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So, like many of us, she decided to take this time of confinement to dive back into IMVU. Only there was a problem.

YukuS logged on to find out that her account was restricted.

She had access to log into her account and use her old items, she could communicate with old friends and accept requests from new ones, but she no longer had access to use the over million dollars credits she accumulated, even though she received notifications that her items were still being purchased from users.

She also could not develop new content, which meant she could not upload the new line of products she had created for the last six months.

The reason for the restriction, a missed email requested verification of her email account due to not hearing from her for an allotted time.

YukuS answered the email hoping it would solve the issue. It did not.

She took the next step in reaching out to customer service creating a ticket (IMVU case #03332021) in hopes that they could assist her with the issue. In IMVU’s defense, they like many other companies currently have a reduced staff due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The customer support person she spoke to was named Glenn.

From her explanation, he asked her several questions to verify that she was the owner of the account which she answered. To her admission, one or two of the questions she did not remember due to it being over a decade since she opened the account.

After Glenn informed her that she missed some questions, his next request was for YukuS to submit a picture of herself holding up her government ID for verification in order to reinstate her account.

This made YukuS extremely uncomfortable, and she refused to do so.

Objectively speaking in the age of digital identity theft, I am inclined to agree with YukuS’s decision. It is a bit of an extreme request especially for a 3D social media platform. YukuS decided to do the alternative, which was send a screen shot of her email account showing that her account was still active and still getting emails from IMVU which also included purchases made by users.

Here we now come to the climax of this tale.

On October 17th, 2020 when YukuS attempted to log into her account, she was unable to. Thinking that she forgot her password she did a reset, except it was not allowing her to log in via her username but her email address.

Finally, able to log in she was in shock and horror (her words) to find that her account was no more. Instead YukuS’s profile of a 35-year-old female originally from New York, USA was replaced by a profile named awe2, a 26-year-old female from Indonesia.

As she researched further, her account was disabled, her content removed from the site, her over one million credits was gone along with items she had purchased over the years. She also no longer had contact with her many friends on IMVU.

By now you are probably saying to yourself, “So what is the big deal, she lost her account. It sucks but it’s not the end of the world.”

The problem is that for someone like YukuS, it is a big deal, it is a huge big deal.

YukuS is a young woman who suffers from a series of mental issues, she needs to take medication and see a professional in order to deal with these issues, and a 3D platform such as IMVU was an outlet that allowed her to deal with those issues.

The reason why I am writing about this is because I know YukuS, she is a friend of mine, and on October 17th, 2020 I had to talk a mentally traumatized thirty-five year old woman reduced to a sobbing child off a fucking ledge in the middle of the worse pandemic in the history of this country where isolation is key.

So as much as I am attempting to be objective with this article, I am a little bit pissed off as I write it.

I am assuming that like everyone else IMVU is supposed to be there for its patrons.

So, what happened?

Why did it fail to be there for YukuS?

Delay in communication is understandable, everyone all over the world are in uncharted waters in regard to this pandemic.

But why the hell would you delete a fourteen-year-old account of one of your developers that housed over one million credits that she earned?

Why would you do this in the middle of a pandemic where social distancing is key, and citizens are urged to stay inside? Where your platform is one of the key platforms of communication to the outside world for people like YukuS?

I never got into the whole 3D avatar platform thing; I have no interest of talking to a girl avatar controlled by a fat guy in his momma’s basement. Nor do I wish to be asked to go onto another chat so I can be coaxed to show my tits (Looking at you Second Life).

The only avatar I was happy to own is my Pokémon GO trainer avatar. Been trying to catch them all since 2014.

As I write this article, I began to realize why I decided to take it on.

I found the Reality Check.

In this time of uncertainty, where we are apart from our loved ones, it is extremely important to try and connect with them, especially with those with mental health issues. Because as much as companies like IMVU, celebrities, and politicians are there for you, they really are not and cannot be.

For all those mentioned, their main priority is to protect their bottom line, their image, or both.

If we’re all going to make it through this, it is our job to take care of the ones we love, it’s our job to pick up the phone, send a text, or do a video chat with the people we care about in our lives, to make sure that they are okay, and will be okay when this all ends.

IMVU from what I can tell failed YukuS in her most fragile moment. The cost for me was over one hundred and forty dollars to Uber Eats sending her wine and Chinese take out so that we can eat and drink together over video chat.

We talked for hours until the wine was done, and our eyes got heavy, but it was worth it.

Later in the afternoon before I wrote this article, I checked in with YukuS.

She will not delete the IMVU app in hopes that someone from IMVU will contact her and fix the damage that was done, but I got her to open a Pokémon GO account.

It will not replace the years of hard work she put into IMVU, but I think she will have more fun especially once the isolation mandate is lifted. Also, with the remote raid passes coming out, she will have a lot of fun getting some shinies and legendries.

To remain objective, I humbly invite IMVU to respond to this article. I and hopefully many others including their current customers would love to hear their side of this story.

Also, YukuS has given me permission to post images of her email to showing only her IMVU activity to confirm that everything in this article is accurate (SEE BELOW).

This has been another Reality Check.

[sportashitpost]

im gonna buy grey lenses for robbie and glanni

[flippinoptimist]

sgrub thing: im awake on my moon (derse? its purple) and doing research, doesnt look like the game happens until we're 6 or smthn, so that gives like a sweep to prepare, hopefully. ive done a headcount on the dreamers here; including me, there are 8 of us. 2 questions; isnt there usually an equalish number of players on each moon? if there is going to be more than 12 of us, how will aspect work? or secondlike, if we have no prospit dreamers, will that be a problem? im page of mind if it matters

sorry for leavin you waitin dude!  the game is probably gonna wait till youre six, thats the normal age, but ive heard of it waitin as long as nine sometides.  dont count on that, but, also maybe dont be surprised if it decides to get a little crazy w/ the timing in the other direction.  it likes startin on peoples hatchdays though, so thatll help.

generally you’re gonna be split 50/50, so 8 total players oughta be 4 on each moon – and 8 on one moon means that if your game is normal thatll probably mean 8 on the other.  yikes!  but since that takes you above 12, i see a few main possibilities:

1) extra players might have some of the weird hybrid aspects.  i heard of a Thane of Pain once, and a Page of Dreams.  dreams ended up havin a lot to do with dreamselves and bubbles and shit, and i never found out what the deal with pain was.  i checked with the guy who programmed my session, and he said he had some halfbaked code in our session that technically allows for the game to mashup or edit classpects for scenarios like this, and make brand new custom ones as needed, but that he wasn’t all done programming that part yet at the point where our timeline crashed.  if i had to take a guess, Dreams is kind of like Hope, but with about half the shit traded out for stuff from mind and void.  or maybe its its own whole new thing?

anyway, the way to test for this one : try to connect each player to an aspect, and especially look for pictures where their aspect symbol ought to be.  if you see weird extra symbols that You Don’t Know, outside the normal 12?  you gotta research those yourself, and theres probably 8 players on the other moon.  im going to guess that the game will try to fill at least Time and Space normally, but after that its a grab bag whether it’ll go for custom or normal ones.

also, if you can figure out who programs your copy of the game, definitely ask them to look into whether there are custom aspects or not.

2) extra players might have the same aspects but different classes than another player.  they might have their own separate lands, or they might share a Land with their other dude with the same aspect.  if this is the thing, youll see pictures of visibly different people with the same aspect symbol on their chest in the frescos and shit.  if this goes down, fuckin tell me about it because i am curious as shit how thatd play out.  if players share lands, they might be expected to do so cooperatively (”the two heroes band together to …”), or competetively (”the two heroes fought for dominance over..”).  even if they tell you to fight, you can probably get better results from cooperating.

one scenario to be worried about here : what if prospit has 8 players, all with the same aspects as you guys, and tries to pit them against you by telling them youre the bad guys just because you got assigned to derse?  if you meet an unfamiliar player, try real hard to make sure this isn’t the case, and to let them know you want the universe thing to germinate successfully, if that is your goal.

3) prospit might have No players, and be uniquely fucked.  convincing them that you want to go to their side will be hard as shit, but might be doable.  you might have to sabotage derse all on your own w/ no help from them – or maybe the war in your session is nonstandard enough that the sides dont mean what they usually mean?

if prospit has no players at all, research the entire moon war from scratch.  figure out Why each side is doin what it does, and what their plans for skaia are, and which side you like the best.  because your session is off the rails in an interestin way, an you’ll have to make educated decisions as best you can.

you might need to ask sprites to verify this one, whether prospit has any princes/princesses.

good luck guy