Rec Room will close on June 1st , according to a recent blog post. The company blames, “The recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming,” saying that, “The path to profitability has gotten tough enough that we’ve made the difficult decision to shut things down.”
Over the past decade, Rec Room claims to have reached over 150 million players and creators, with over half a billion friendships made on the platform. In total, people all around the world spent a cumulative 68 thousand years in Rec Room. The top UGC rooms saw over 500 years of play time each.
Rec Room says that, “Despite this popularity, we never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business. Our costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue we brought in.”
What it means for Creators
Partnered Creators can no longer create new monetised UGC content, while those with sufficient tokens can choose to cash them out. March Room Rewards will be paid out in early April.
Creators can’t download a working copy of their rooms, but they will be able to download rooms and invention data via the Steam PC build in formats to recreate them as a standalone Unity app. This data will be available until the scheduled closure at noon Pacific time on June 1st.
Red Room thanked users saying, “Your boundless creativity and enthusiasm has been a source of great inspiration and joy. We wish we could have found a way to keep things rolling, but unfortunately this is the end of the road.”
Steve is an award-winning editor and copywriter with more than 20 years’ experience specialising in consumer technology and video games. With a career spanning from the first PlayStation to the latest in VR, he's proud to be a lifelong gamer.
