Groups

Groups is a social feature aimed towards forming communities within VRChat. Creating a group allows other users to join it, typically to find like-minded people or participate in events within Group Instances. Members of a group may choose to represent it, advertising the group's banner on their nameplate and profile. The Groups feature was officially released on November 30th, 2022.

Joining a Group

To join a group, you must first navigate to the group's page. Users can be in up to 100 different Groups at a time, or up to 200 with an active VRChat+ subscription. To join a group, you can either find one through the Search tab or Group tab; join a group by looking at another user's list of groups they are publicly displaying on their profile or by clicking on specific promotional posters located in worlds.

Once you are in a group, you are able to join any active Group instances via the Instances tab on the group's page. All active Group instances for every joined group are amassed in the Group Activity tab. The Group Activity tab can also be found in the Main Menu's Social page.

Representing

Representing a group displays the group's name and banner on the user's nameplate and profile. Users may represent one group at a time.

Membership Visibility

A member of a group may choose to prevent their membership from showing on their profile in the list of joined groups. Do note that this setting can be bypassed by mutual group members if their group permissions allow for viewing members of the group.

TODO: this last bit about bypassing visibility may need fact checking. I'm pretty sure this is the case but I can't say with 100% certainty. — big 2024/05/31 11:15 UTC

Visible	The group is shown on your profile for everyone.
Friends Only	The group is only shown on your profile to your friends.
Hidden	The group is hidden from your profile

Creating a Group

To create a group, a user must first have an active VRChat+ subscription. Maintaining the VRChat+ subscription is not necessary for retaining group ownership. An active VRChat+ subscription is required to change icons, banners and edit the group's gallery using the VRChat+ Gallery, as well as transferring ownership of the group to another user. Currently, creating a group must be done via the VRChat website. A user can own a maximum of 5 groups, of which a maximum of 100,000 members can join each group.

Joinability and Visibility

When creating a group, an onboarding process presents the creator with a few privacy options.

The joinability of a group determines any given user's ability to join the group. This setting can be changed later.

Free Join	Anyone can join the group freely.
Request to Join	New members must request to join the group.
Invite-Only	Those with the right permissions may invite new members to the group.

The visibility of a group determines whether or not the group can be represented or displayed on a member's profile. This setting cannot be changed later.

Public	Members can choose to advertise the group on their profile.
Private	The group cannot be advertised or displayed by members.

Group Roles

TODO: roles text describing the 'role presets' provided as well as other group moderation things? — big 2024/05/31 19:42 UTC

Group Instances

The owner of a group and those with the correct permissions may create Group instances. There are three tiers of Group instances.

Group	Only members of a group (or certain roles within the group if specified) can join the instance.
Group+	Any friend of a user in the instance can join. Group membership is not required to join the instance.
Group Public	A publicly listed instance hosted by a group to which anyone can join. Group membership is not required to join the instance.

Group instances are often moderated by the group hosting the instance. The group's owner and those given moderation powers through role permissions may warn, mute, kick or ban a user within the instance. Banning a user from a group permanently prevents them from joining any Group instances made by the group, as well as joining the group itself.

Group Instance Queues

Group instances are also great for managing events with a high amount of people. For that situation, the VRChat Group Queues option will setup a waiting queue to process joining requests when the instance max capacity is reached. When you join the queue for an instance, you will be placed in and will receive a invite request when a slot becomes available. Once the request is received on your side, you have one minute to join the instance before your slot is given to the next person.