As part of its Reality Labs cuts, Meta is closing three VR gaming studios and will stop developing new content and features for its VR fitness app Supernatural
The closures follow reports of planned Reality Labs layoffs weighted toward VR headsets and Horizon Worlds, making content teams part of a broader division-wide retrenchment.
Twisted Pixel Games and Sanzaru Games are among the three studios closing, immediately ending their roles as Meta-owned VR game developers.
Supernatural users lose the prospect of new content and features, while the service's remaining team and community face a reduced product roadmap.
Second-order effects
Meta's Quest ecosystem loses planned first-party games and ongoing fitness programming that could help sustain headset engagement, increasing the importance of outside developers and existing content.
The cuts signal that internally produced exclusives face a higher bar for investment, an instance of the exclusive-content opportunity cost facing platform owners.
Third-order effects
If sustained, the pattern would make Reality Labs less of a vertically integrated VR content operator and more dependent on third-party software and services to support its hardware platform.
VR's platform competition may increasingly turn on the durability of developer ecosystems and service retention rather than on costly, Meta-owned studios; the scale of that shift depends on what investment replaces these teams.
The trend: Meta's Reality Labs restructuring points to tighter prioritization of VR spending, with owned content and live-service support being pared back alongside hardware-focused cuts.
Horizon platform has no future because no more affordable VR headsets will be released by Meta for Horizon OS, so gradually number of active users will shrink even further.
Really wish giant money companies that swallow up studios for trend chasing would find ways to let these studios regain their independence rather than just killing them off.
If this is true (I see no reason why it wouldn't be) then this marks a truly sad inflection point for VR Sanzaru are among the best developers in VR. If Meta are shuttering studios of this caliber then this is the first time I've started to actually worry about the future of VR
This one hurts. Twisted Pixel made some of the best 360 arcade games and Sanzaru made a great Sly Cooper sequel. Getting relegated to the Facebook VR mines and then being shutdown is brutal.
Armature is composed of people who worked at Retro and made Metroid Prime. Their recent release, RE4 VR is legit incredible. Absolutely vile action, not just Armature but Sanzaru and Twisted Pixel.
VR game makers can make ANY kind of videogame. Savvy publishers and biz dev peeps that are looking for their next level up should be assembling a bunch of killer new game studios from the talented game makers leaving Twisted Pixel, Armature, Sanzaru, Cloudhead, etc. These
Supernatural acquisition gotta be the biggest fumble of all time. Where was the international launch? Yes yes music licensing is a bitch but you're Meta 😂
What a sucky heartbreaking day for those working on VR at Meta. I'm seeing layoffs and studios shut downs all over. Twisted Pixel seems to be shut down, Deadpool VR, Sanzaru is shutdown, Asgard's Wrath, Supernatural team is gone, Armature, RE4 VR gone, layoffs all over for VR.
Meta is laying off about 10% of its Reality Labs metaverse division, and the cuts include closing down some of its VR gaming studios. Twisted Pixel Games, Sanzaru Games, and Armature Studio are all being closed down 😔 https://www.theverge.com/...
I'm hearing that my old team at Sanzaru within Meta has been hit with a total studio shutdown. If you see these folks apply to your studios, please hire them! It is a really great group of people. — As for Zuckerberg, wouldn't spit on him if he was on fire.
Meta stinks and had a terrible vision for VR. But it also invested in great studios who were producing excellent games that pushed the medium forward, despite Meta not being as serious about that. I hope those shuttered teams can get their flowers and not be lumped into “tech b…
Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts. Developers from Twisted Pixel Games and Sanzaru Games have posted about their studios being closed down.