These are news that will shake the fledgling virtual worlds scene:

 Ryan Schultz wrote the following post Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:45:30 +0100 Metaverse Bombshell: NETFLIX Acquires Ready Player Me—What Does This Mean for Metaverse Platforms Using Ready Player Me Avatars? https://ryanschultz.com/2025/12/22/metaverse-bombshell-netflix-acquires-ready-player-me-what-does-this-mean-for-metaverse-platforms-using-ready-player-me-avatars/


Now, there are lots of virtual worlds and virtual world systems where Ready Player Me avatars can be used. In VRChat, it's one of the most popular options, but still one out of many. In Vircadia and Overte, it's useful because these two have no built-in support for avatar creation whatsoever, because they still have more important things to take care of than avatar creation.

But then there are hundreds of small platforms like Spatial.io that have integrated Ready Player Me as their avatar-building system. As their only avatar-building system, because the extra effort of implementing an alternative wasn't worth the time and effort for the small team or the one sole developer behind it.

[spoiler=Content warning for the image: car]



The next player to integrate Ready Player Me will be Netflix for its gaming and social VR side. However, what Netflix is going to do is swallow Ready Player Me out entirely. It will be integrated into Netflix. The whole staff will be transferred to Netflix, for now anyway. And on January 31st, 2026, PlayerZero, the cross-platform avatar-making platform launched only a year ago, will be shut down.

This means that Netflix will not only integrate Ready Player Me. It will take Ready Player Me away from hundreds of smaller platforms at the same time, leaving them with no working source for avatars whatsoever and probably no avatars at all.

Seriously, this happens when you place all your bets on one single third party.



[spoiler=Content warning: eye contact, crying, anger]

Explanation:

The images are based on the following meme templates in this order:

• Left Exit 12 Off Ramp (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/left-exit-12-off-ramp)
• Dependency, also known as Complex Structure Supported by a Tiny Part (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/complex-structure-supported-by-a-tiny-part)
• Train Hitting School Bus (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/train-hitting-school-bus)
• Soyboy vs Yes Chad, a combination of Soyjak (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/soy-boy-face-soyjak) and Nordic Gamer, also known as a Yes Chad (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/yes-chad)

Ready Player Me (https://readyplayer.me/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_Me) is known for various tools for creating fairly high-quality 3-D avatars for various uses. Their name is a play on Ernest Cline's 2011 novel about a 3-D virtual world and, more famously, Steven Spielberg's 2018 film adaptation.

Ready Player Me uses a large number of built-in assets plus artificial intelligence to build avatars. It can be integrated into other platforms, it has a dedicated avatar creator for the popular 3-D virtual world platform VRChat, and it can be used to export avatars for various standards.

Among developers of small virtual worlds and virtual world systems, it is popular because it can fairly easily be integrated into their systems, giving them quick and easy access to very versatile avatars on par with characters in modern-day video games. This saves them from developing their own avatar system, including rigging, configuration and outfitting, and from designing their own avatar components or waiting for their user community to supply these.

Such virtual worlds are actually fairly numerous. The COVID-19 pandemic with its social distancing provided fertile grounds for virtual worlds which would allow for interactions without real-life social restrictions. And Mark Zuckerberg's 2021 announcement to start his own virtual world kicked off a metaverse hype. Countless virtual reality and virtual world projects were launched in its wake.

Bigger players could afford to develop their own avatar engine and avatar-building system and usually also design their own avatar components. Small start-ups, on the other hand, lack the development capacities for that, as do non-profits and free and open-source projects. Some, like the decentralised virtual world systems Vircadia and Overte, require their users to generate their avatars in external tools, convert them to something that Vircadia and Overte understand and upload them on sufficiently fast servers.

Others made use of the solutions offered by Ready Player Me to integrate it directly into their worlds. This immediately gave them an avatar-building system along with all assets to build avatars from as Ready Player Me generates them on the fly.

There are other avatar providers like Ready Player Me, but Ready Player Me is the biggest and most well-known one by far. In fact, oftentimes, Ready Player Me must have been the only one of its kind known to virtual world developers. Even if not, they deemed integrating at least one more such provider an unnecessary effort. After all, Ready Player Me did what it was supposed to do.

One year ago, in December, 2024, Ready Player Me launched PlayerZero which can be integrated into virtual worlds and the like, too. The killer feature of PlayerZero is that users can create an avatar and use the self-same avatar in all virtual worlds that have PlayerZero implemented without ever having to remake it. In fact, generating the same avatar twice over is next to impossible, seeing as Ready Player Me has always been AI-powered.

With the takeover of Ready Player Me by Netflix, the latter will fully incorporate not only its staff, but also its technology and assets and make them available exclusively to Netflix products.

On January 31st, PlayerZero will be shut down which will immediately rob hundreds of virtual worlds of their entire avatar engine. Not only will users no longer be able to create new avatars, but even existing avatars will vanish along with the entire avatar engine, essentially breaking these virtual worlds altogether.

These worlds will have to choose: Either they find and integrate another avatar engine. This would take quite some time during which the whole world will remain essentially defunct, and then everyone will have to build new avatars. Or they develop their own avatar engine and either design their own avatar assets or also provide a way for their user community to make, upload and share avatar assets. This would take much more time, and it would require people talented enough to make avatar assets. Well, or they give up and shut down, and be it because they cannot survive for a prolonged period of time during which nobody can access them because nobody has an avatar anymore.

As hinted at in the fourth image, Second Life and worlds based on OpenSimulator, both from the 2000s, have a much more resilient avatar system. It doesn't even use assets built into the world engine. Instead, avatars are built in-world from content that first has to be acquired into the inventory. With only very few exceptions, this content is made and offered by users.

##Metaverse ##VirtualWorlds ##ReadyPlayerMe ##Netflix ##SecondLife ##OpenSimulator ##OpenSim ##Meme #ImageMacro" ##Wojak ##WojakComics" ##Soyjak ##CryingWojak ##YesChad ##NordicGamer ##QuotePost ##QuoteTweet ##QuoteToot ##QuoteBoost ##Car ##Cars ##CWCars ##EyeContact ##CWEyeContact ##Crying ##CWCrying ##Tears ##Anger ##CWAnger ##Sensitive ##⚠️

UPDATED JAN. 20th, 2026 WITH EXTRA COMMENTARY: Metaverse Bombshell: NETFLIX Acquires Ready Player Me—What Does This Mean for Metaverse Platforms Using Ready Player Me Avatars?

https://ryanschultz.com/2025/12/22/metaverse-bombshell-netflix-acquires-ready-player-me-what-does-this-mean-for-metaverse-platforms-using-ready-player-me-avatars/

e536 — Can we skip all AI this time?

A look at what the team was playing in 2025, some retro gaming hardware, restoring old paintings, and Public Domain Day 2026.

https://gamesatwork.biz/2025/12/22/e536-can-we-skip-all-ai-this-time/

El lado del mal - Netflix compra Ready Player Me: Un Wrap 2025 sobre Avatares 3D para gaming y mundos virtuales https://www.elladodelmal.com/2025/12/netflix-compra-ready-player-me-un-wrap.html #Netflix #Avatar #VRM #3D #Gaming #MundosVirtuales #ReadyPlayerMe #Metaverso

#Netflix acquired #ReadyPlayerMe, an Estonian #avatarcreation platform, to build #avatars for its subscribers. The acquisition aligns with Netflix’s shift in #gamingstrategy towards #TVbased #games and #interactiveexperiences. https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/19/netflix-acquires-gaming-avatar-maker-ready-player-me/?Metaver.se #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #XR #VR #MR #AR #BeyondPictures

Netflix Buys Ready Player Me, an Avatar-Creation Developer, to Let Users Make Their Own Gaming Personas

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/netflix-acquires-ready-player-me-games-avatar-creation-1236612915/

Just Dance VR: Welcome To Dancity é anunciado! #avatares #dança #imersão #jogabilidade3d #jogo #justdancevr #metaquest #música #queen #readyplayerme #realidadevirtual #selenagomez #trailer #ubisoft #welcometodancity https://alternativanerd.com.br/games/just-dance-vr-welcome-to-dancity-e-anunciado

Something that really sets #SecondLife and #OpenSimulator apart from newer #VirtualWorlds is how they support creativity and how flexible they are. This goes all the way to #avatars. No other worlds have avatars that are as customisable as in Second Life and #OpenSim.

Now, before you're wondering: Second Life is not dead. It's very much still alive. It has been online continuously for two decades now, and it looks a whole lot better than in all those pictures and videos from the heyday around 2007. And OpenSimulator is a platform for virtual worlds that can be described as Mastodon to Second Life's Twitter, only without Elon Musk involved and actually almost the same look & feel. This, by the way, means that the #Metaverse is older than you may think, and even the concept of a metaverse that consists of independently-owned worlds has been done 15 years ago already.

Anyways, back to avatars.

In general, avatars in virtual worlds are seen as something monolithic. An #avatar is one thing. To be used as-is with everything on it. If you want to change something, you'll have to change everything.

For example, a #ReadyPlayerMe avatar is always one object. You can configure it on Ready Player Me, but it comes out in one piece with no chance whatsoever to modify it in-world, once it's converted and imported. If you're lucky, and if the world lets you, you can change the height, i.e. scale the whole avatar. If you want to wear something else, and be it a different pair of shoes, you'll have to go back to Ready Player Me, generate a wholly new avatar with the same settings except for different clothes, convert it for whatever world you use and import it.

In other words, if you want to be polite, and you want to take off your shoes when entering someone's virtual home, you have to replace your entire avatar with a remake of itself minus shoes, that is, if that's possible in the first place. If you can do that on the fly right where you are, that is. Taking off your shoes or your hat is as big an effort as turning into R2D2.

If you want multiple outfits on otherwise the same person, you'll have to spend an afternoon on Ready Player Me, churn out a few dozen complete avatars, and if you have to convert them for your virtual world, spend some time on converting every single one of them.

In Second Life and OpenSim, you don't have to go through such trouble. That's because avatars are modular, and they're put together in-world instead of in an external editor. They haven't started out at this level of modularity and customisability; it increased whenever Linden Labs introduced new ways of attaching stuff to avatars. And in almost all cases, that stuff was made by users. This eventually even included custom-made bodies; Second Life and OpenSim avatars always have the so-called system body, but it can be rendered invisible, and then you can wear a mesh body instead that looks a lot better.

Now, the body is only that, a usually human body. Everything else can be attached and replaced separately just the same, be it clothes, be it shoes, be it hair, be it jewellery, be it other accessories, be it other body parts, whatever. This doesn't require a separate editor. This can be done in-world. You can actually do a striptease in-world. And you can do it all the way through with one and the same avatar. You don't need half a dozen complete avatars at different stages of disrobing.

To illustrate what I mean, here's a picture of my virtual self.


(@Mastodon users: The picture below this post should go here, and it goes here for everyone else.)

I put this avatar together from:

• a shape
  
• a mesh body including head and limbs
  
• a skin texture
  
• a hairbase texture
  
• a body hair texture (barely visible)
  
• an eye texture
  
• hair as an attachment
  
• glasses as an attachment
  
• two-piece underwear as textures (not visible)
  
• socks as textures (not visible)
  
• a hoodie as an attachment
  
• a pair of jeans as an attachment
  
• a pair of shoes as two attachments

Plus some technical stuff:

• a classic hairstyle (which, in this case, creates a bald that doesn't interfere with attachable hair)
  
• four alpha masks to render a few places on the body invisible which would otherwise clip through the clothes

Add on top a HUD to control certain body settings and an "animation override" running in the viewer rather than being attached to the avatar itself that replaces the default movement animations with better ones.

And that's a male avatar. Female avatars can go even further. Also, it's normal in Second Life to have a headless body and a separate head.

It's also worth mentioning that I've acquired everything the avatar is made of in-world and not from some third-party online app. I've only imported the skin and hairbase textures, but after getting them in-world, exporting them and fixing them in GIMP.

All this can be replaced individually, independently from one another. And most of it (save for the skin, the shape, the eyes and the classic hairstyle) can be omitted entirely. Also, generally, everything can even be modified in-world without the need of an external editor, much less converting back and forth. My glasses, for example, started out as sunglasses; I've made them clear myself while wearing them.

Even the shape is way more flexible than in other worlds. Again, sometimes you can only adjust the overall size, sometimes probably not even that.

Second Life and OpenSim have:

• 4 sliders for the body as a whole
  
• 11 sliders for the head
  
• 11 sliders for the eyes
  
• 4 sliders for the ears
  
• 11 sliders for the nose
  
• 9 sliders for the mouth
  
• 9 sliders for the chin
  
• 10 sliders for the upper body
  
• 9 sliders for the legs

That's 78 sliders to control the size and shape of a male avatar, and almost all of them can even control attached mesh bodies. And that still doesn't include the sliders for classic hair and classic "painted-on" layer clothes.

Why are they so many? Well, this goes back to the early days when basically the only way you could customise your Second Life avatar was by slapping on textures and tinting them. But when mesh came round, it wasn't simply used for one-piece avatars. Whichever parameter a piece of mesh, e.g. a head, could be rigged to was rigged to. So even when someone has made a mesh head in Blender, you can modify that head in-world with a few dozen sliders.

This, by the way, is one important reason why it's so hard to lure people away from Second Life and OpenSim into other virtual worlds: The latter tend to lack in-world building and especially avatar customising features.