What you need to know
- Ready at Dawn Studios, part of Oculus Studios, will be permanently closing, effective immediately.
- The studio produced some of the highest-rated VR games of all time, including Lone Echo, Lone Echo 2, and Echo VR, as well as PSP classics like God of War and Daxter.
- Meta says Ready at Dawn employees are encouraged to apply to other studios within the Oculus Studios group.
- The reduction was made to meet Reality Labs’ new budget cap rather than as a proactive cost-saving initiative.
One of the largest VR development studios is closing its doors permanently today (August 7). Ready at Dawn Studios was responsible for the critically and customer-acclaimed Echo VR and Lone Echo games. But the studio hasn’t released a new game since Echo VR was ported to Quest in May 2020, and sales of Lone Echo 2 likely played a role in the decision, as it’s a PCVR-exclusive game.
Meta made the first cuts to the studio Last February When it announced it was shutting down Echo VR despite still having a player count “in the mid-10s,” as Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth noted at the time. It’s worth noting that Meta just claimed Quest 3 sales are “exceeding its expectations” in the company’s latest data. Quarterly earnings call last week.
A report In mid-July Meta said that it was cutting the budget of its Reality Labs division by 20% by 2026, and Meta’s official blog post backs up 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 new budget constraints and that Oculus Studios can have a “better long-term impact” on VR development.
Meta also commented that this is not a sign of broader cuts to the number of first-party games on Quest and that the company is still committed to VR development.
While Reality Labs has historically spent billions per quarter on development costs for XR hardware like Meta Quest 3 and Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glassesvirtual reality games and Meta AI FeaturesThe company is starting to put a strict cap on that spending each quarter. When I was asked how this decision differs from cost cutting, I was told that “you can’t increase the budget to make something work.”
Ready at Dawn has been part of Oculus Studios since June 2020, just weeks after Echo VR was ported to the original Oculus Quest. Meta says Ready at Dawn employees are encouraged to apply to other areas within Oculus Studios and that the company wants to retain as many talented developers as possible.
Meta also explains that while this measure involves the closure of the entire studio, it is not enough to trigger California’s WARN Act. The WARN Act requires companies to notify employees in advance if they lay off more than 50 employees in a 30-day period.
Meta had no comment when asked about the possibility of Quest ports for Lone Echo or Lone Echo 2 by other developers at Oculus Studios.