Meta closes Ready at Dawn, the studio behind Echo VR
Image: Oculus Studios
Meta is closing Ready at Dawn, the first-party studio behind VR games like Echo VR and Lone Echo, Android Central reported on Wednesday. The shutdown is effective immediately. Meta acquired the studio in 2020.
As for why Meta is shutting down the studio, here’s what Android Central said:
One report in mid-July said that Meta was cutting its Reality Labs division’s budget by 20% by 2026, and an internal memo sent to Meta employees by Gio Hunt, VP Oculus Studios — seen by Android Central — supports this reasoning. A Meta spokesperson told Android Central that the cuts weren’t being made to “save money,” per se. Rather, these cuts are being made to ensure that Reality Labs stays within the new budgetary constraints and that Oculus Studios can make a “better long-term impact” in VR development.
We tried to ask for more details, but Meta spokesperson Alaina Laszewski declined to comment. In its most recent earnings, Meta said that its Reality Labs division, which its VR efforts fall under, lost nearly $4.5 billion.
When Meta announced that it had acquired Ready at Dawn, it said that the studio would “continue creating memorable, immersive, and innovative VR content for gamers around the world as an independently-operated studio.” And while it did go on to release Lone Echo II for the Rift and Rift S — the game isn’t natively available for Meta’s standalone Quest headsets — Meta shut down the well-loved Echo VR in August 2023.
At the time, CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth said that the resources to make Echo VR “could be put to other uses that I think will be useful to the now tens of millions of people who are in VR.” The Ready at Dawn team also said that it was working on its next project, but now it seems that project won’t be released.
Ready at Dawn Studios is also known for games like The Order: 1886, God of War: Chains of Olympus, and the standalone Daxter game.
Image: Oculus Studios
Meta is closing Ready at Dawn, the first-party studio behind VR games like Echo VR and Lone Echo, Android Central reported on Wednesday. The shutdown is effective immediately. Meta acquired the studio in 2020.
As for why Meta is shutting down the studio, here’s what Android Central said:
One report in mid-July said that Meta was cutting its Reality Labs division’s budget by 20% by 2026, and an internal memo sent to Meta employees by Gio Hunt, VP Oculus Studios — seen by Android Central — supports this reasoning. A Meta spokesperson told Android Central that the cuts weren’t being made to “save money,” per se. Rather, these cuts are being made to ensure that Reality Labs stays within the new budgetary constraints and that Oculus Studios can make a “better long-term impact” in VR development.
We tried to ask for more details, but Meta spokesperson Alaina Laszewski declined to comment. In its most recent earnings, Meta said that its Reality Labs division, which its VR efforts fall under, lost nearly $4.5 billion.
When Meta announced that it had acquired Ready at Dawn, it said that the studio would “continue creating memorable, immersive, and innovative VR content for gamers around the world as an independently-operated studio.” And while it did go on to release Lone Echo II for the Rift and Rift S — the game isn’t natively available for Meta’s standalone Quest headsets — Meta shut down the well-loved Echo VR in August 2023.
At the time, CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth said that the resources to make Echo VR “could be put to other uses that I think will be useful to the now tens of millions of people who are in VR.” The Ready at Dawn team also said that it was working on its next project, but now it seems that project won’t be released.
Ready at Dawn Studios is also known for games like The Order: 1886, God of War: Chains of Olympus, and the standalone Daxter game.