Vertigo Games Shutters ‘Metro Awakening’ Studio Amid “challenging” VR Market

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Vertigo Games, the Netherlands-based VR veteran behind a host of popular titles, is closing its Amsterdam studio, citing continued challenges within the VR games market.

The news was announced by CEO Richard Stitselaar in an open letter, noting “the VR market remains a challenging space,” which is resulting the in closure of Vertigo Studios Amsterdam.

Originally called Force Field before being acquired by Rotterdam-based Vertigo Games in 2021, the studio produced a number of VR games and experiences over the years, including Anne Frank House VR (2018), Coaster Combat (2017) and Landfall (2017) as Force Field, and Metro Awakening VR (2024) as Vertigo Studios Amsterdam.

Notably, the Rotterdam-based sister studio was itself acquired by Embracer Group’s Plaion (ex-Koch Media) in 2020 for $60 million, known for Arizona Sunshine (2016), Arizona Sunshine 2 (2023), and After the Fall (2021).

The company didn’t provide details regarding the number of employees affected, a timeline for the closure, or whether any projects currently in development (or staff) will be transferred to other teams within the organization.

The shutdown reflects an all too familiar trend facing both the VR industry and games industry as a whole. Earlier this year Meta announced it was shutting down a number of internal VR studios amid a wider shift in its Reality Labs XR division to instead focus on AI and smart glasses.

This included the cancellation of a number of unannounced games, such as a Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel from Meta’s Sanzaru Games, an unannounced Harry Potter VR game for Quest from Skydance Games, and a major project from Moss developers Polyarc.

Survios, one of VR’s most senior game studios and developer behind Alien: Rogue Incursion (2024), has also effectively shut down following a layoff of a majority of staff.

Additionally, social VR platform Rec Room, once valued at $3.5 billion, shut down on June 1st. Meanwhile, Meta’s own Horizon Worlds is now focused “almost exclusively” on mobile in the future as Quest players will no longer have access to future content.

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Snap Acquires AR Startup Illumix to Boost Next-gen ‘Specs’ Glasses

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Snapchat parent Snap has acquired Illumix, an augmented reality software company behind Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery (2019), an AR adaptation of the popular horror franchise. The acquisition goes far beyond developing games for Snap’s upcoming AR glasses though.

As first reported by Variety, Snap has acquired Bay Area-based Illumix for an unspecific amount, something that’s slated to boost the company’s AR glasses efforts—and not by stocking the next-gen pair of Snap Spectacles with AR games.

Founded in 2017, Illumix is building a perception layer for phones, AR glasses, and robots that essentially lets software understand and interact with the physical world.

As noted by Variety, Snap is primarily interested in Illumix’s work in scaling that mapping technology and building it out for real-world experiences. Notably, Snap is slated to adopt Illumix’s technology and platform, and retain most of Illumix’s staff.

Snap Spectacles (gen 5) | Courtesy Snap Inc

Illumix’s proprietary spatial mapping and AR platform is “designed to make AR experiences work reliably in […] real-world environments—persistent, context-aware, and anchored to the spaces around us,” Illumix CEO Kirin Sinha says.

“That work has powered AR experiences across real-world venues, spanning location-based entertainment, enterprise, and gaming. This acquisition is a major milestone for Illumix and a powerful next chapter for the technology, platform, customers, partners, and team we’ve built,” Sinha continues. “Snap’s bold vision for AR and AI strongly aligns with what we have always believed: that the future of computing will be more immersive, more intuitive, and ultimately more human.”

The acquisition follows recent layoffs at Snap, which notably didn’t affect Specs Inc., its recently formed AR glasses subsidiary. They did however affect 1,000 team members, including 16% of Snap’s full-time employees, and came alongside a closure of more than 300 open roles—something Snap CEO Evan Spiegel described as a part of the company’s “crucible moment.”

While Snap hasn’t shown off its next-gen AR glasses yet, we’re hoping to learn more at Augmented World Expo (AWE) later this month, which takes place in Long Beach, California on June 16th. There, Spiegel is set to deliver a keynote titled ‘Making Computing More Human‘.

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Valve Confirms Steam Frame and Steam Machine Coming This Summer

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We still don’t know exactly when Steam Frame, Valve’s standalone VR headset, is set to launch, although now the company has confirmed both it and Steam Machine are slated to arrive this summer.

Valve previously aimed to launch Steam Frame and Steam Machine, its console-style PC, in early 2026.

Due to the ongoing component crisis though, which has seen RAM and storage prices skyrocket, Valve said in February it had to rethink release and pricing around both devices.

Now, Valve has at least confirmed in a Steam news update that its wayward VR headset and Steam-flavored mini-PC are coming sometime this summer.

As a part of the announcement, Valve reiterated it’s added both Steam Frame and Steam Machine to its Verified program, which lets users know how well a game works across specific Steam hardware, including Steam Deck.

While Valve says Steam Frame primarily targets wireless PC play, specific games can also feature a Steam Frame Standalone Verified badge.

According to Valve’s guidelines, flatscreen games must run at a minimum 30 fps at 1,280 x 720 during normal play, whereas standalone VR titles must run at a minimum of 72 fps at 1,728 x 1,728 during normal play. Valve says VR games below 1,440 x 1,440 will appear with an ‘Unsupported’ badge, which notably won’t stop users from buying or attempting to play the game in question.

Although Valve seems to be getting its ducks in a row for the launch of both Steam Frame and Steam Machine on the software side of things, one very big missing piece of the puzzle is pricing.

Considering Valve announced last week that Steam Deck is getting a sizable price hike, bringing an increase of $240 to $300 to its handheld gaming PC, it could be a sign of sticker shock yet to come.

Still, if Valve is confident enough to announce a summer release window now, we should know sooner rather than later.

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Meta is Spinning out ‘Supernatural’ a Mere 3 Years After $400M Acquisition

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Supernatural won’t be in ‘maintenance mode’ for long, because Meta announced it’s effectively spun out the VR fitness app into an independent company, Supernatural Health.

The founders and coaches behind Supernatural are parting ways with Meta. Soon, users can look forward to more fresh content, which has notably been missing from the subscription-based VR fitness app since Meta announced in January that it would no longer be pushing content updates as a part of a wider pullback from VR gaming.

And it’s going to be clean break, as the new studio says in a community post that Supernatural is set to be independent from Meta, and will be a new, separate app in Quest’s Horizon Store.

While the current version of Supernatural will be winding down on December 3rd, which includes all associated subscriptions, the studio expects the new app to launch later this fall, noting it plans to build “major parts of the technology from the ground up as a much smaller company.”

That also means subscription prices will change from its current $10/month, or $100/year rate:

“A while back, the subscription price was lowered to make Supernatural more accessible, and we still believe in that goal. To keep building independently, and continue delivering the experience you expect, we need to return to the original $20/month and we haven’t made that decision lightly.”

The studio says it’s offering a ‘Founding Member’ rate, which will cost $180 for the first year. After that, the price jumps to $20/month, or $200/year. That said, the upcoming version of Supernatural will include all original coaches “back on day one,” as well as new workouts and future features.

“The early days won’t be perfect, but our small team is committed to building the Supernatural you know and love and taking it to the next level,” the studio says. “We are so grateful for everything you’re capable of, in the app and outside of it. Thank you for showing up for Supernatural, and for each other.”

This follows a lengthy battle to acquire Supernatural, which seems so distant now in retrospect. In late 2021, Meta announced it was acquiring Within, the studio behind Supernatural, for a whopping $400 million.

It wasn’t a smooth transition though, as the deal quickly drew the ire of the US Federal Trade Commission, which claimed Meta was unfairly monopolizing the VR fitness space. After more than a year of costly antitrust battles, the FTC eventually dropped the suit in early 2023, noting that it would seek no further appeal.

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This Quest Accessory Wants to Turn Your Brain Activity Into VR Avatar Control

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PiEEG, a Scotland-based brain-computer interface (BCI) startup, announced it’s launching a facial interface for Quest headsets that aims to turn your brain signals and facial micro-expressions into real-time avatar control.

PiEEG has specialized in BCI since it was founded by Dr. Ildar Rakhmatulin in 2022, specifically to provide low-cost solutions for researchers, developers and hobbyists. Now the company says it’s getting ready to launch a Kickstarter soon for its PiEEG XR, a neural facial interface for Quest.

The device, which includes built-in electroencephalography (EEG) sensors, is of course targeting developers and researchers hoping to integrate EEG data into XR applications, although it’s also slated to arrive with native VRChat integration, letting users “control [avatars] directly from your brain and facial expressions,” the company says.

Notably, EEG sensors measure electrical activity generated by the brain. However, consumer EEG systems generally don’t “decode” specific thoughts. Instead, they can detect broad signals associated with states such as attention, relaxation, or cognitive workload, which can then be mapped to software actions.

That said, the company maintains its sensor-studded facial interface for Quest will enable more expressive avatars and additional hands-free input methods, which can be translated into various effects, modifying environments, or altering avatar animations based on attention-related signals using its ‘Focus-to-Action’ API.

Pre-production prototype PiEEG XR | Courtesy PiEEG

And like its other BCI hardware, the company says PiEEG XR is set to be fully open-source, providing access to software tools and raw data streams for developers, educators, and researchers.

“Whether you are a developer looking to build ‘thought-controlled’ horror games, or a researcher studying emotional responses in VR, the VR-Link provides the raw data and tools you need to innovate,” PiEEG says.

The EEG facial interface itself is powered by the company’s IronBCI platform, which includes 24-bit resolution, 250 samples per second acquisition rate, Bluetooth Low Energy 5 (BLE 5) connectivity, and low-noise signal acquisition.

We’re hoping to learn more soon about pricing tiers and more use cases when the campaign goes live, which is expected soon. In the meantime, you can check out the Kickstarter here and sign up for launch notifications. You can also see a short demo of PiEEG XR below, showing an avatar animated via EEG signals.

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James Cameron’s 3D Studio Acquires 3D Camera Maker STEREOTEC

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Lightstorm Vision, James Cameron’s 3D production studio, has acquired STEREOTEC, a 3D camera maker that’s powered a number of films and multi-camera immersive concerts.

Details of the deal are still under wraps, however Lightstorm Vision says the acquisition will help integrate Stereotec’s technology directly into its 3D production pipeline, enabling capture, processing, and delivery of 3D video.

“By capturing consistent ‘ground truth’ depth data at the source, the technology unlocks downstream automation, AI processing, and the scalable 3D workflows that Lightstorm Vision is bringing to cinematic, broadcast, and immersive platforms,” the companies say in a press statement.

Stereotec is most recently known for providing the camera tech behind 3D concert ‘Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour’, which Lightstorm says was one the “largest and most complex live 3D capture deployments ever executed,” having included more than 17 stereo camera systems (34 cameras) across fiber and RF into a unified pipeline under live tour conditions.

That sort of tight integration allowed editorial teams to begin cutting synchronized 3D multi-cam footage while the performance was still underway, the studio says, something aimed at reducing reliance on post-production reconstruction and lengthy editing times.

“Capturing accurate depth at the source produces results no downstream process can recover after the fact—and provides the foundation for the scalable, production-ready 3D workflows Lightstorm Vision is establishing as the new standard across cinematic, broadcast, and immersive platforms,” the studio says.

Established in 2024 as Lightstorm Entertainment’s dedicated 3D studio, Lightstorm Vision’s stereoscopic tech has supported over 27 feature films, 9 concert films, and 140 sports broadcasts worldwide, generating in excess of $8 billion in global box office. It also most recently struck a multi-year deal with Meta to produce spatial content across multiple genres, including live events and full-length entertainment.

Founded near Munich by stereographer and engineer Dr. Florian Maier in 1997, Stereotec produces precision-engineered 3D rigs, having supported feature films including Ang Lee’s Gemini Man (2019) and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016), Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (2024), as well as immersive titles for Quest and Apple Vision Pro. To date, the company holds twelve Lumiere Awards from the Advanced Imaging Society for excellence in stereoscopic 3D production.

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‘Spatial’ Social XR Platform Ends Metaverse Ambitions with Enterprise Pivot

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Spatial, the parent company to Animal Company studio Wooster Games, announced it’s closing down its own Spatial Creator platform, ending free and pro subscription tiers and discontinuing 3D world hosting next month—effectively ending the platform’s metaverse ambitions.

Spatial, which released its app at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2020, confirmed that Enterprise users won’t be affected, as the platform will remain operational and continue receiving support under existing agreements. Its Creator metaverse program however, which included both free and paid tiers targeted at individual users and small businesses, is getting the boot.

The company outlined the decision in a blog post, noting that it follows years of rising infrastructure costs associated with hosting and scaling its multiuser 3D worlds.

According to CEO Jinha Lee, Spatial explored alternatives including new pricing models, tiered hosting plans, and partnerships, but concluded that maintaining the platform would require “passing rising costs directly to you at levels that are not sustainable for independent developers and small studios.”

Courtesy Spatial

“We were not able to find a model that kept the Creator platform viable without compromising the experience you and your communities deserve,” Lee says.

Spatial says Creator-tier users will lose full access to the platform on July 27th, which will include the permanent deletion of and all creator-hosted files. Users will be allowed to export work before that date, as the company has already sent out download links for uploaded assets via email. The company is also refunding subscriptions for web users, while customers who subscribed through app stores must cancel manually.

The closure of its Creator program marks the end of Spatial’s nine-year effort to build an open platform for immersive social experiences, which notably supported a host of devices, including Quest and PC VR headsets, and mobile and flatscreen monitors.

This follows a number of other social XR platform closures, notably Rec Room, which closed on June 1st, and Meta’s own Horizon Worlds, which has pivoted to mostly focus on mobile users moving forward.

Spatial says the company is now putting more focus on its in-house game studio, Wooster Games, known for break-out free-to-play VR hit Animal Company, in addition to developing more original titles. At the time of this writing, Animal Company is the third best-selling game on Quest, featuring over 200,000 reviews at a [4.8/5] user rating.

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