Hello everybody,
I believe they have already talked about this, but I haven't seen it anywhere yet so I'm going to ask the mafia scientists here.
You could create a parallel imvu using the official imvu, like what happens with Meredian, Zona, Match 3d. Union and others that use the 3DX Chat engine on independent servers?

Note:
Sorry for the mistakes, I'm using a translator.

Maybe. Someday.

Right now, we don't have the manpower for a project that large.

We have a private server, but it only covers product hosting / loading.

With each passing day imvu restricts us more, I hope that one day you guys in the mafia can create a perfected imvu, that would be great.

that's the downside of closed source software.

About the clients you mentioned, Meredian I believe is practically unmaintained (or anyway it's impossible to download the client from their official site), Match 3D makes you download a 10 GB compressed file (launcher + data)... even the official client doesn't take up that much space (the installation folder takes up just over 8 GB).

By the way you need to register a different account for each client you use, so what would be the benefit if not just to save money on subscription?

Unfortunately, the only software house that released its client under an open source license was Linden Lab (a pioneer in everything), allowing the development of multiple third-party clients. I believe this is the one and only case, and I doubt there can be others.

Edit: links to download Meredian client seem to be back available (before writing the post I had made numerous unsuccessful attempts), I'll probably try it, if it's incompatible with my PC, like Match 3D, I really don't understand the reason to develop mods for a client if not everyone can use it.

As far as the open source talk is concerned, unfortunately it may be true that the passing of time has been quite inclement with a platform like Second Life and other factors contributed to the failure to grow parallel projects like OpenSimulator, but I really believe there can't be absolutely any similar context in modern closed platforms.

The benefit would be to play without so much censorship in words, today you can't say almost anything that refers to sex, imvu sells AP as being the passport to more adult content, offering a hotter experience, and yet they don't allow poses with pelvic contact, much less a male nude with an erection, they are falsely advertising, if they just want a children's game then don't sell AP with the promise of a more adult and real sexual experience.

Note:
Sorry for the mistakes, I'm using a translator

I believe that it's necessary to protect all users, but it would be sufficient to offer age verification free of charge to everyone to allow adult users who, regardless of whether they have the AP Pass or not, want to deal with topics not suitable for younger users without the risk of being censored.

As far as poses are concerned, in my opinion IMVU is too influenced by peer reviews (peer reviews are mainly done by kids who need free credits) and in any case I believe that for many years now it has been contextualizing itself towards a very different use from the one for which it was initially designed. When I joined 12 years ago it was already taking this direction and with NEXT they have confirmed that this will be the future. It's probably wrong to associate IMVU with adult entertainment software these days, in fact it hasn't been like this for years.

There are alternatives, but using software such as IMVU (or others) on your own infrastructure is expensive and not feasible if you don't have adequate human and economic resources (an example of this is the software you mentioned), as well as it's easy to run into legal problems as they are copyrighted software.

Thanks for the clarifications

anyway, I regret not being able to use Match 3D, unfortunately my video card isn't compatible but it seems like a much better maintained and stable project than meredian.

I don't know how meredian worked in the past, I was able to download the client after several attempt but there seems to be problems with the servers (problems downloading updates, problems accessing the client).

This proves that it's not easy to manage a parallel project If you don't have adequate means for the purpose, at least sufficient to make the project usable to a fairly wide audience.

i have used meredian and tried again recently. hit the same problems as @IndyGeno78... it wouldn't connect, "server full", etc.

the meredian client doesn't explain it, but you must visit their discord channel and get your ip white-listed. after that, you can connect and try it.

the graphics are quite impressive, but avatars are sadly limited. there is a new spin-off project called "Nude" that is under-development (they have a discord channel) but it doesn't sound like the avatars are going to be any better.

meanwhile, i have had an idea for a partial solution to the imvu problem... let's call it "a hybrid solution"...

for me, imvu is basically a decent experience except for all the super-annoying restrictions on adult content. the "hybrid solution" would be that the desktop client gets h4c|<7d such that it can download the adult content from another server (e.g., mafia-operated) that doesn't lock everything down the way imvu does. all the regular content would still come from the imvu server, while the adult content would come from a different server. there are a couple of ways to do this, i think. so, it's "hybrid" in the sense that regular content comes to the client from imvu, while adult content comes from somewhere else.

a benefit would be no vu restrictions on adult content, that BM products will never have to be uploaded to vu's servers, they will never be subject to peer review, being censored, deleted, etc., and if this scheme were implemented, BM products wouldn't need to be digitally obfuscated in any way.

to implement this, it would still involve a chunk of work, but i suspect a lot less work than trying to fork an entire new client and ecosystem, following the pattern of these other platforms like meredian, nude, etc.

just as I imagined, unfortunately support for meredian has come to an end.
They explain the reasons for this on a post on their blog [End of support] Launcher is officially discontinued.
The reasons, as you may have noticed, don't differ much from the plausible ones I had already given you

The launcher is a personal project that has worked well, but it is still a hobby, each update of the game and each modification of the program was a new compilation, and it takes a long time to create it, it is a hobby that I have liked to do but when the hobby becomes an obligation is the beginning of the end.
Maintaining the launcher has become very difficult for me, and the desire is not the same as at the beginning.

blueDay wrote:

to implement this, it would still involve a chunk of work

I suppose so. Indeed, programming a client to be connected to multiple resources would be much more complex especially if the technologies used on the servers were to differ. Even developing a platform with features that are at least compatible would require efforts that cannot be underestimated.

Just as an example, many third-party clients for Second Life also offered support for OpenSimulator (via OSGrid), but over the years they had to develop two different clients for each service, as new features were being added on Second Life that OpenSimulator would never integrate.