VR RPG ‘Township Tale’ is Shutting Down in July Following Second Game Cancellation

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Alta announced it’s sunsetting multiplayer RPG A Township Tale (2021) next month, making for a second bit of bad news this year since the studio pulled the plug on its follow-up game, Reave.

Alta co-founder and CTO Joel van de Vorstenbosch announced the news on the game’s Discord, noting the studio explored multiple avenues of keeping the game alive, which ultimately failed.

Now, the game is scheduled to go dark on July 20th, which also includes pulling it from the Quest Store and shutting down the game’s PC VR installer.

Here’s van de Vorstenbosch’s full statement:

Hi @everyone, It’s with a heavy heart that I’m announcing the closure of A Township Tale and its live services. The game will become unavailable to download, and its backend services will be taken down, on the 20th of July.

Like many others, we’ve been impacted by the state of the VR industry in ways we didn’t foresee. As many of you know, we discontinued our second game, REAVE, at the start of May.

We have explored various avenues to keep A Township Tale live, but unfortunately none are realistic in our situation. A Township Tale began in 2016, launched in pre-alpha in 2018, and launched on Quest in 2021. Across that journey, we had the privilege of building what we believe became one of the most special experiences in VR, with one of the best communities in VR. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been part of that.

To our players: thank you for playing, for your feedback, and for the fun times. To everyone who spent time in Discord: I’ve personally sent around 120k messages here, mostly from back when I was working on ATT, and it was a genuine pleasure spending that time with you all. To our moderators, server owners, and community leaders: thank you for helping maintain, organize, and support this community over the years. To our supporters: thank you for your ongoing support. I can confidently say A Township Tale would not have made it this long without you.

And to everyone who worked on ATT over the years: thank you for helping build something truly special. Unlike REAVE, A Township Tale’s community platforms will not be closing. Discord, Reddit, the wiki, and other community spaces will remain live, though they may shift further toward being community-managed if they have not already.

Our hope is to preserve some of the history around A Township Tale, and to ensure the community can maintain contact with each other. We know many friendships and relationships have been built here over the years. I encourage everyone to take advantage of the coming weeks to jump back into ATT and enjoy some final adventures.

I also encourage people to share other games they’re interested in, including in #other-games, so that the fun can continue elsewhere after the 20th of July.

A Township Tale is what you might call an MMO-like, as it offers up an open-world environment with a wide variety of roles so users can survive, craft, and build up an abandoned settlement together. It only supports up to 8 players on Quest and 40 on PC VR, however it was one of those games that easily tricked you into thinking it was much larger.

Initially launched in early access on PC VR headsets in 2018, the successful launch on Quest in 2021 allowed Alta to attract over $12 million in investment, which at the time was used to expand the studio and accelerate development of A Township Tale.

Then, in 2024, the studio announced it was working on ‘Project 2’, later revealed to be extraction-style multiplayer dungeon crawler Reave.

Although the studio progressed to the point of hosting months of open playtesting, Reave was ultimately cancelled in May 2026, with the studio citing “increasingly difficult market conditions.”

The Sydney, Australia-based studio hasn’t announced layoffs, and the size of the studio is not certain at this time. Following its $12 million funding raise in 2022, the studio said it was “more than two-dozen and growing,” having scaled up from its original three-person founding team.  

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Studio Behind Top-selling VR Extraction Shooter ‘Ghosts of Tabor’ Announces Layoffs

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Combat Waffle Studios, developer behind VR extraction shooter Ghosts of Tabor (2024), announced the studio is laying off a number of staff in effort to “align the company with the current state of the VR industry.”

Initially released in early access in 2023, Ghosts of Tabor generated over $30 million in revenue with the sale of over 10 million units leading up to release on PSVR 2 in 2025, making it one of VR’s big success stories.

Notably, in addition to selling well across SteamVR and Pico, the Escape From Tarkov-style shooter is consistently one of the top-selling Quest games of all time too.

In a LinkedIn post, Combat Waffle Studios CEO Scott Albright announced the studio is making staffing cuts as a direct result of current turmoil in the VR gaming industry.

Here’s Albright’s full statement below:

Today we made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team.

As part of this, we are saying goodbye to a number of talented individuals who have contributed meaningfully to our work. We are grateful for their efforts and are committed to supporting them as they transition to new opportunities. Any studio would be fortunate to have them.

We came to this decision after having a project we were working on with a large platform partner get cancelled

These actions are part of a broader effort to align the company with the current state of the VR industry and ensure we are positioned for long term sustainability.

Our focus remains unchanged. Ghosts of Tabor continues to be our core product, and we will continue expanding that universe alongside our partners.

We remain confident in the future of VR and our role within it.

It’s uncertain how many the cuts have affected, or how many remain. In July 2025, Albright noted in a SQR Magazine interview that the studio’s staff totaled 50 employees, which was notably before the Nokomis, Florida-based studio moved from a 7,000 square foot space to a 23,349 square foot building. At the time, Albright said the move could accommodate “an extra 100 people.”

In 2025 alone, Combat Waffle also released Day Z-style multiplayer zombie shooter Silent North and multiplayer survival game Grim, neither of which have yet lived up to the meteoric success of Ghosts of Tabor.

This follows a growing list of studio shutdowns, layoffs, and project cancellations, the most significant of which was Meta’s rash of VR studios cancellations and broad pullback from funding VR games.

As a result, a number of in-progress VR games were cancelled, including an unannounced Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel from Meta’s Sanzaru Games, an unannounced Harry Potter VR game for Quest from Skydance Games, a major project from Moss developers Polyarc, and now, presumably, Combat Waffles next project “with large platform partner.”

Other notable shutdowns include social VR platform Rec Room, VR veteran and Alien: Rogue Incursion studio Survios, and Metro: Awakening satellite studio Vertigo Studios Amsterdam.

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‘Synth Riders’ Gets Surprise Linkin Park DLC Drop, Its Biggest Music Pack to Date

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Kluge Interactive today announced the launch of the Linkin Park Music Pack for Synth Riders, making it the VR rhythm game’s biggest paid DLC music pack to date.

The Linkin Park Music pack includes 13 of the band’s most iconic tracks which span the group’s entire career, from their breakout album Hybrid Theory (2000) to their most recent releases.

Check out the track list below:

1. In the End
2. Numb
3. Faint
4. One Step Closer
5. The Emptiness Machine (Radio Edit)
6. Bleed It Out (Radio Edit)
7. Breaking the Habit
8. Battle Symphony
9. Papercut
10. Castle of Glass
11. Heavy Is The Crown
12. Up From The Bottom
13. Over Each Other

“Linkin Park defined a generation of music fans, and we couldn’t be more excited to bring their music into Synth Riders,” said Kluge Interactive’s Sahin San. “Whether you grew up on Hybrid Theory or discovered them through their latest album, this pack is going to hit hard.”

Fun fact: the latest music pack is actually the game’s largest following the release of the Lady Gaga Music Pack in December 2025, which brought 11 of Lady Gaga’s most popular tracks to orb-smacking, note surfing game. Notably, since Synth Rider’s early access release in 2018 (full 1.0 release in 2019), DLC packs have typically hovered around 5-7 songs.

In the meantime, The Linkin Park Music Pack is available for purchase individually or as a full bundle, which you can grab starting today for Meta Quest, PSVR 2, and SteamVR headsets.

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Apple Raises Price of Vision Pro by $200 Amid RAM & Storage Shortage

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Apple is hiking the price of essentially all of its devices, which includes the already very pricy Vision Pro standalone mixed reality headset.

The News

As reported by 9to5Mac, a host of Apple devices have just gotten significant price increases. The company previously confirmed this would be the case in response to the ongoing RAM and storage crisis, although it wasn’t certain when, or by how much.

Now, the full updated list of Apple device prices is here, which has revealed that Apple has effectively bumped the latest M5 version of Vision Pro to $3,700.

Apple Vision Pro (M5) | courtesy Apple

Released in October 2025 for $3,500, the M5 Vision Pro is essentially a hardware refresh of the original launched in 2024, which included the company’s M2 chipset and the same $3,500 price tag.

Other devices to see similar price hikes include MacBook, iPad, iPad Air, Apple TV, HomePod, and even MacBook Neo, which the company launched for $600 in March, now bringing it $700. You can check out the full updated list over on 9to5Mac.

Speaking to Reuters, Apple reveals it held out for as long as possible before giving into price hikes:

“We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” Apple said in a statement. “We ​have shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising ⁠prices on a number of products, including today’s increases for iPad and Mac.”

My Take

To the company’s credit, Apple isn’t the first to raises prices. In April, Meta announced it was hiking the price of Quest 3S and Quest 3, raising the price of them by $50 and $100 respectively.

Then, in May, Valve announced it was hiking the price of Steam Deck, which was sandwiched with the news that its was delaying both the Steam Machine and Steam Frame, and rethinking its release and pricing strategy. To boot, Steam Machine is now available for pre-order for the princely sum of $1,050, which doesn’t particularly bode well for Steam Frame, its first standalone VR headset, which still doesn’t have a price or release date.

And although Apple isn’t the first to raises prices due to the current component crisis, it certainly won’t be the last. Any other holdouts in the market are likely soon to follow, if only because mighty Apple has justified it.

Apple isn’t actually the biggest drivers of these cost increases though, which are primarily due to the surging demand for AI data centers.

As it is, South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix, and US company Micron Technology produce 93 percent of the world’s RAM. And although Apple has historically leveraged its power to outbid other companies to secure components at cheaper prices, it’s the big players in AI right now—Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Anthropic—that are hoovering up the lion’s share of the RAM and NAND.

I’m actively resisting the urge to call Apple a victim in all of this, because there is no greater victim than the end consumer, although it is odd to see the world’s third most-valuable company essentially shrug as its market cohorts blow up the AI bubble yet further—all while sporting a little over 4 trillion dollar market cap in the process.

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Amazon Prime Day Deal Reduces Quest 3S For First Time Since April Price Hike

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Amazon Prime Day is among us, which also means you can save a couple bucks on a brand new Meta Quest 3S.

Its only been a few months since Meta raised the price of Quest 3 and Quest 3S, essentially bumping prices across the board by $50 – 100.

Now, for Amazon’s June 23-26th Prime Day sale, you can actually get Quest 3S for the same or better than its previous MRSP depending on what you pick, which includes both 128GB and 256Gb storage options and various game bundles:

• Meta Quest 3S (128GB) Gorilla Tag bundle ($300)
• Meta Quest 3S (256GB) Gorilla Tag bundle ($380)
• Meta Quest 3S (256GB) Batman: Arkham Shadow bundle ($380)

Additionally, all of the choices above come with three free months of Horizon+, Quest’s subscription game service that lets you download and play a load of VR’s greatest games for as long as you’re a member.

As for the decidedly less cheap and cheerful Quest 3, Meta is still sitting on its regular pricing, although you can save $50 when buying a refurbished unit direct from Meta.

Notably, Meta’s permanent price increase in April brought Quest 3 (512GB) from $500 to $600, while Quest 3S now regularly starts at $350 (128GB) and $450 (256GB).

At the time, the company chalked up the increase due to increased costs of RAM, which have inflated by a wide margin starting late last year—an issue fans of Valve’s upcoming Steam Frame will likely encounter when the company finally releases pricing information for its first standalone VR headset, which will very likely follow Steam Machine’s eye-blistering $1,050 lead.

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Disney Song Pack Comes to ‘Trombone Champ’ VR in July, Including Toy Story & Little Mermaid Environments

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Flat2VR Studios announced during the VR Games Showcase today that Trombone: Champ Unflattened is getting a paid DLC pack next month that will bring six new Disney songs to VR’s silliest music game.

Coming at some point in July, Trombone Champ: Unflattened is getting a brand-new paid song pack featuring six beloved Disney classics, including:

• “A Whole New World” from Aladdin
• “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid
• “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from Toy Story
• “Be Our Guest” from Beauty and the Beast
• “Circle of Life” from The Lion King
• “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid

The pack also includes two new themed performance environments, an iconic kid’s room inspired by Toy Story and an underwater escape inspired by The Little Mermaid.

Flat2VR Studios says we can expect the paid Disney DLC pack to arrive on all supported headsets in July, which includes Quest, PSVR 2, and SteamVR headsets.

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Omni One is the First VR Treadmill with Official Support for Meta Quest

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Virtuix has finally brought native Quest support to Omni One, making it Quest’s first officially supported VR treadmill.

As Virtuix’s consumer-focused VR treadmill, Omni One launched in 2024 with support for Pico 4 Ultra Enterprise, as well as PC VR headsets, which notably included Quest if connected to a capable PC via Link.

In February, the company announed it was taking part in the ‘Made for Meta’ program though, which promised to bring Omni One support to a number of Quest games in addition to giving the omni-directional VR treadmill a spot in Meta’s official Quest accessory store, putting it alongside devices like bHaptics TactSuit Pro, Logitech MX Link stylus, and Roto VR Explorer Chair.

Starting today, that’s where you’ll find it, as well as direct from Virtuix, priced at $2,595, now boasting native support for both Quest 2 and Quest 3.

“Omni One for Quest is a major milestone for VR gaming,” said Jan Goetgeluk, CEO of Virtuix. “Working with Meta to bring full-body movement to the Quest ecosystem creates an incredibly immersive and physically active gaming experience that takes VR to the next level. We’re excited to bring Omni One to millions of Quest users around the world.”

Granted, not all Quest games are supported on Omni One right now. Virtuix highlights a few that have been optimized, including VAIL, Forefront, The Boys: Trigger Warning, Star Trek: Infection, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City, Men in Black: Most Wanted, Exoshock, and Zero Caliber 2.

Notably, Virtuix is bundling those last four games for free for a limited time with Omni One for Quest. The company says additional compatible games will be releasing over time; you can check out the evolving list here.

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