We have always believed that digital self-expression should be accessible, fun, and creatively empowering. From Facerig in 2014 to Animaze in 2025, our mission has been to open new roads, inspire, and give anyone the tools to become anything on camera – no matter who they are or where they're streaming from. Idealistically, we pursued doing that in a more challenging way, with its own render tech, not tied to a large corporation's gaming engine. Your avatars, your streams, and your creativity are the reason Animaze exists, are independent, and Fluffo and friends have a digital home.
Today, we need to share an important update that ensures Animaze can continue to exist.
Over the past 2 years, maintaining development, server infrastructure, support, and updates has become increasingly challenging. We are a tiny team, and our financial situation has reached a point where continuing under the current structure would eventually put Animaze at risk. We want to move forward, not wind down. We believe Animaze has a long future ahead – but to secure that future, we need to make a change.
With this update, free-tier sessions will be limited to 45 minutes per session, similar to what is happening on video conferencing platforms. All paid tiers will remain unlimited, unaffected, and continue to receive all full-feature access.
This was not an easy decision. Before this update, the free tier had no session limit, as it was deployed more on a social impact angle than a financially self-sustaining endeavor. That is why it never had any significant monetisation attached to it, neither data collection-based nor any ads.
We maintained that model for as long as we possibly could. But for Animaze to keep growing, to expand character features, improve tracking, fix bugs faster, build better tools, release more avatars, and actually deliver on the roadmap – we have to ensure the platform can sustain itself, and the costs we incur each month associated with the free tier are not currently being covered. We know many of you rely on Animaze for streaming, content creation, VTubing, meetings, or just for fun and self-expression. If Animaze has been part of your voice online, we invite you to consider upgrading to a paid plan. Every subscription directly supports development, keeps our team working, and ultimately keeps Animaze alive for everyone. The 20 USD yearly cost for a regular sub we trust is not challenging anyone's yearly budget, and right now, to make this decision even easier, we even have a 7-day Steam sale on the historical snapshots, bringing their costs to the most accessible they've ever been.
By upgrading to a paid tier, you help us:
Bring back active development to a higher pace, instead of slowing or halting it
Release new avatars, assets, tech improvements, and features faster • Ensure long-term stability so
creators can rely on Animaze for years to come
Keep a 45-minute free tier available for new users discovering avatar self-expression
And last but not least: ensure that an independent platform for self-expression and free speech, that does not have to rely on render engines controlled by large corporations, like Unity and Unreal, continues to exist
If you love Animaze, if you want to see it evolve, if you want Fuffo to be around tomorrow, your support now matters more than ever.
For those who upgrade, thank you. You are directly powering the future of this platform.
For those who continue using the free tier, thank you as well – we hope Animaze still offers you value, creativity, and joy in every casual 45-minute session.
Over the last 11 years, we have worked to carry forward this tech in a way that is independent of larger corporations, stays accessible, and is unintrusive. With respect, transparency, and hope, we’re asking for your help now so we can carry Animaze even further.
Today's update also brings support for Rokoko's Studio motion capture output (body, hands, and face) via the VMC input layer, so the professional teams working with motion capture suits have more options now to bring their experiences to the stage using Animaze avatars and Rokoko motion capture hardware. Animaze has been part of a very exciting initiative to revive muppet/puppet theatrical production with avatars, and we can't wait to see where this leads.
Due to Steam's rules around GenAI content and interfacing with third-party services that might require separate payments like ChatGPT, we will have to remove the ChatPal experimental feature from the Steam version of Animaze if we want Animaze not to be labeled and recategorized as a GenAI app. Animaze's avatar content is very much human-created, the 3D models are carefully crafted by human artists, and most people using it are very much human and not AI. We feel it would be unfair that, for a rather experimental feature for optionally connecting "AI brains" to avatars, to force the entire Animaze app to be re-categorized and labeled a "GenAI" app. After all, that content is less than 0.1% of the content created by talented entertainers with Animaze.
To comply with the Steam rules on the matter, the ChatPal feature is being removed from all currently available Steam versions of the Animaze app. It will continue to exist on the standalone version of Animaze, as before. That is all for this update! With respect, transparency, and hope for Fluffo's future,
Dragos, Catalin, and Alex.
Edit: If on this new version, on Steam only, you do experience a corner case with the timer warning still appearing even after buying the Animaze 2024 DLC, please make sure you are updated to Animaze version 1.27.12713 (currently on the live branch), which should address that issue.
Like always, the previous version too will hang around for a while on the "Previous" beta branch, in case of an emergency. If you need a reminder on how to navigate branches to rollback to the previous version: