Facebook adds HTC Vive, SteamVR, and Windows desktop support to beta of Spaces, its first VR chat app
Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica :
Context & Ripple Effects
Spaces launched in April 2017 as a Rift-only beta, a four-person VR hangout that followed Oculus's earlier Parties voice chat and Rooms for Gear VR. By October Facebook had already pushed personal photos, videos, and shareable 3D objects into the app, building out its content loop before widening the audience.
Today's move opens that loop beyond Facebook's own hardware: Vive owners, anyone on SteamVR, and even Windows desktop users without a headset can enter the same rooms. It matters because Facebook is decoupling its social VR audience from Oculus device sales — a bet that paid off only briefly, since Spaces was ultimately shut down when Horizon replaced it in 2019, with the social-VR lineage continuing in Horizon Home on Quest.
First-order effects
- HTC Vive and SteamVR users gain access to a social VR app previously locked to Oculus Rift, and Windows desktop users can join without any headset at all — instantly enlarging Spaces' addressable user base beyond Facebook's own hardware.
Second-order effects
- Cross-platform presence becomes table stakes for VR hangout apps: with Facebook's app no longer Rift-exclusive, rival headset makers and SteamVR-side developers face pressure to make their own social spaces interoperable rather than walled.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward social VR consolidating around one account-and-app layer spanning many devices — the direction Facebook itself followed by retiring both Spaces and Oculus Rooms for Horizon, then carrying that structure forward in Horizon Home.
The trend: Social VR is shifting from per-headset exclusives toward cross-platform meeting spaces run by platform owners, with Facebook willing to cannibalize its own hardware lock-in to grow the network.