“VRChat is not going anywhere” Founders Reassure Amid Downturn in Social VR Platforms

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Rec Room is shutting down in June. Meta’s Horizon Worlds is searching for greener pastures on mobile. Now, VRChat co-founders say there’s no need to worry about the social VR platform’s future.

“In case you were wondering, VRChat is not going anywhere,” studio co-founders Graham Gaylor and Jesse Joudrey say in a recent blog post.

According to Gaylor and Joudrey, who founded VRChat in 2014, some of that confidence comes from the platform’s ability to consistently bring in record numbers of visitors across Quest, SteamVR, Pico headsets, PC, and mobile devices.

“Last New Year’s Eve, nearly 150,000 people were in VRChat at the same time—celebrating a worldwide event for yet another year. Most of those folks had visited us for New Years multiple times before, but for some, it was their first time,” the studio founders say. “It’s been three months since, and we’ve broken that user record twice since then. Our latest record? Nearly 160,000 people in VRChat at the same time.”

VRChat Avatar Marketplace | Image courtesy VRChat

While those sorts of events periodically bring in usership peaks, it’s what people buy once they’re in VRChat that matters. And its creator economy is booming, the founders say.

“Not only that, but our creator economy, avatar marketplace, and first-party stores are all growing. Creators like Studio TrickForge, spookyghostboo, and nawty have made VRChat a place where they can create amazing communities, experiences, and identities, all while earning for their hard work. We onboard more creators every day.”

Notably, the platform rolled out its centralized marketplace for avatars and virtual items in mid-2025, which uses its in-game currency, VRChat Credits. Prior to this, users mostly bought and sold avatars through third-party markets, such as Booth or Gumroad, essentially making for a new revenue stream VRChat could tap into.

Gaylor and Joudrey say however one of the biggest reasons VRChat is still kicking in a time of market headwinds is its communities.

“Our community is the thing that makes VRChat different from every platform that has come and gone. You create worlds that defy imagination. You build avatars that embody expression and identity in ways never seen before. You welcome strangers into your communities, make them feel at home, and often change their lives for the better.”

VRChat Historical Peak Concurrents – Steam Version | Image courtesy SteamDB

This follows some pretty worrying signals from the broader VR gaming segment. It was revealed in January that Meta is making a monumental shift in its priorities as a supporter of VR gaming, as its Reality Labs XR division has shifted focus to AI and smart glasses.

Meanwhile, Meta has closed nearly all first-party VR studios and cancelled a number of in-progress games, such as an unannounced Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel from Sanzaru Games, an unannounced Harry Potter VR game for Quest from Skydance Games, and a major project from Moss developers Polyarc.

More recently, social VR platform Rec Room, once valued at $3.5 billion, announced it will be shutting down in June.

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‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ VR Co-op Game Coming to Quest, PC VR & Pico in April, New Trailer Here

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City is officially coming to Quest, PC VR headsets, and Pico headsets on April 30th.

Developed by Cortopia Studios and Beyond Frames Entertainment, TMNT: Empire City is serving up a co-op supported campaign, letting you team up with up to three other tubular turtles as you battle against the dreaded Foot Clan.

Set after the fall of series’ antagonist Shredder, Foot Clan leader Karai looks to fill the power vacuum, coming from her native Japan to bring order to the chaos in the New York chapter of the Clan.

Image courtesy Cortopia Studios

Ace St. Germain, Beyond Frames Entertainment CEO and Creative Director of Empire City at Cortopia Studios, calls Karai’s approach to leadership “very different” from Shedder’s though.

“How she decides to lead is ultimately up to the players’ relationship with this world,” St. Germain says.

Image courtesy Cortopia Studios

If you didn’t get a chance to play the public PC VR demo during Steam Next Fest last month, check out our hands-on with TMNT: Empire City.

The short of it: the studio seems to have absolutely nailed the Turtles aesthetic and vibe, offering up seemingly a cel shaded universe ripped straight from the comic books.

Image courtesy Cortopia Studios

I’m looking forward to sussing out the game’s combat more than the 15-minute demo allowed, which will undoubtedly be a major component to this narrative-based VR beat ’em up.

What I can say though is it looked promising, as much of the melee action I saw seemed to be pretty tactical, requiring users to strike, parry, block and retreat from unblockable blows.

Ahead of its April 30th launch, fans can pre-order Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Empire City on the Horizon Store for Quest 3 with a 20% discount off its regular $25 price, bringing it to $20. You can also wishlist the game on Steam for PC VR headset and Pico headsets today.

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Why One of VR’s Most Valuable Companies is Shutting Down, According to Top Creator

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Social VR platform Rec Room, once valued at $3.5 billion, announced earlier this week that it will be shutting down in June. The studio says it never quite figured out how to turn a profit, though top avatar creator blueasis maintains the story is a bit more complicated.

If you’ve ever seen the weird little VRChat avatar ‘Brush the Marmoset’—a staple of Internet memes since 2020—you’re likely already familiar with blueasis.

While they’re one of the OG 3D character and environment artist on VRChat, they’re also the top creator on Rec Room, which gives them a fair bit of insight into why the platform’s decade-long existence is soon coming to an end.

Image courtesy blueasis

As one of the most well-funded VR companies to date, the Seattle-based studio attracted over $294 million since its founding in 2016. Its most recent round came in December 2021, bringing to the company $145 million and briefly giving it a $3.5 billion valuation.

Despite its popularity and enviable startup runway, the company said earlier this week it “never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business. Our costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue we brought in. We spent a long time trying to find a way to make the numbers work.”

In a thread on X, blueasis gives an insider perspective on why they think Rec Room is closing up shop. In short, it wasn’t a bad creator economy or lack of returning users; the company just sort of … bungled things.

“I joined Rec Room 1.5 years ago to participate in their avatar cosmetics program,” blueasis recounts. “I made lots of items (2000~) honed my craft, became the number 1 seller on the entire platform, met awesome creatives & talked directly with the team.”

Image courtesy Rec Room

“My estimation of the shutdown; overhiring during the covid boom, making promises they couldn’t keep, continually gambling on new players & tech before focusing on the core experience & existing players.”

Having joined in late 2024, blueasis says it was “immediately obvious that the community was unhappy.”

“Spending so much money on player acquisition, mobile, console etc, with little to no payoff, these users rarely became creators, rarely spent money on the platform etc. The people who cared about the platform, PC, VR, did! but they were neglected in favor of ‘growth’.”

It was ostensibly that gamble to push for rapid expansion that ultimately tipped the studio into its first big tailspin: in August 2025 the company laid off around half of its staff, citing costs related to a surge in low-level content flooding the platform from users on mobile and console.

“I think by the time they realized this it was too late, the numbers were already dire, so they had to keep trucking along in any direction that would make them revenue, which just meant more gambling new features to hope something stuck, AI pet chat bot was a big one people hated.”

Blueasis says the platform’s push for user-generated avatar cosmetics was “their biggest success,” which they reveal accounted for 60% of player spend, “outselling Rec Room original items by 10x.”

Rec Room platform sales breakdown | Image courtesy blueasis

In September 2025—notably just one month after laying off half its staff—the company announced it was paying out more than a million dollars per quarter to creators. That’s a lot of money coming in, a lot leaving into the hands of creators, and surprisingly little captured by the company.

Blueasis highlights the popularity of the UGC avatar cosmetics program and its outsized share of player spend, although the platform’s modest rake on creator sales may also be a big contributing factor.

While the company retains 70 percent revenue after paying platform fees on first-party content, when it comes to UGC, Rec Room only takes a 30 percent rake. This leaves creators with the bulk of the revenue, meaning Rec Room retained far less from top-selling items.

In the end, low fees are usually a powerful tool to help acquire an initial userbase. But they aren’t a lasting strategy, especially when new users aren’t contributing to the ecosystem in a way that offsets costs. And it seems the studio got interminably stuck in that dangerous gap between aggressive user acquisition and eventual platform stability—and just never managed to climb out.

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‘Black Mirror’ to Bring Show’s Tech Dystopia to Life in New Location-based VR Experience

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Black Mirror, the hit sci-fi anthology series on Netflix, is getting its own VR experience soon—set to debut at VR destination Infinity Experience in Montreal, Canada next month ahead of wider rollout.

Developed by VR studio Univrse and Banijay Live Studio, THE BLACK MIRROR EXPERIENCE is slated to mash up physical environments with VR headsets, drawing on themes of the award-winning television series.

According a press statement, The Black Mirror Experience creates a scenario that will “force visitors to make [the] same choices” as seen in the show, which explores society’s complex relationship with technology and the moral quandaries often faced by characters.

Image courtesy Banijay

“Groups are invited to the exclusive opening of Phaethon’s showroom – a tech giant about to unveil its most ambitious creation yet: LifeAgent, a robot designed to simplify your life, understand your desires, and help you become your best self. At first, everything feels seamless. Reassuring. Almost perfect. Until it doesn’t,” the studio explains.

The experience supports up to six players (ages 12+), and will be offered in French, English, and Spanish. It’s slated to launch first at the Infinity Experience location in Montreal on May 21st, however more locations will be announced “soon,” the studio says.

Notably, Infinity Experience operates in seven cities across North America. In Canada: Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, Quebec City, and Mississauga. In the US: Chicago and Atlanta.

Created by Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror returned for its seventh series on Netflix in April 2025, produced by Broke & Bones, with Brooker, Jessica Rhoades, and Annabel Jones as executive producers. Black Mirror is primarily owned by Banijay Entertainment.

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‘Moss’ Developer Polyarc Lays Off Two-Thirds of Studio Following “major project” Cancellation

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Polyarc, the studio behind VR puzzle-platformer series Moss, announced it’s significantly reducing the size of the company, marking another VR pioneer currently experiencing existential turmoil.

The studio released word via a LinkedIn post on Tuesday, noting that layoffs come amid an “unsuccessful team-wide effort to secure funding following the cancellation of a major project.”

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Polyarc says layoffs are affecting 30 employees. According to DevOps Director Alex Holodak (via UploadVR), the studio let go two-thirds of staff, putting the remaining team somewhere around 15 people.

Polyarc isn’t alone in its recent financial troubles. Rec Room, one of VR’s most prominent social platforms, announced this week it’s officially shutting down in June. Meanwhile, VR veteran nDreams, the studio behind recent action-adventure game Reach (2025), signaled earlier this month that it’s going through significant layoffs and studio closures.

Notably, Meta’s recent shift in priorities at its Reality Labs XR division not only came alongside the closure of a number of several internal game studios, but also the revelation it was pulling funding from a number of projects already in progress.

Some of those now-cancelled projects include an unannounced Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel from Sanzaru Games, an unannounced Harry Potter VR game for Quest from Skydance Games, as well as a hard fork applied to all new Horizon Worlds content, effectively leaving only legacy Worlds for Quest users as the company shifts focus to mobile users.

Polyarc hasn’t confirmed whether its now-cancelled project was a result of Meta pulling funding.

Founded in 2015 by ex-Bungie develo[ers, the Seattle-based studio self-published the first Moss in 2018, receiving not only near-universal praise, but also more than 120 global industry awards and nominations. Moss was released across all major VR platforms at the time, including PSVR, PC VR headsets, and the original 2019-era Quest.

Then, in 2022 Polyarc released the hotly-awaited sequel, Moss: Book II. which managed to nab the The Game Awards’ Best VR/AR Game and the VR Awards’ VR Game of the Year. Moss: Book II is widely regarded as a stellar follow-up, getting a solid [8.5/10] in our full review.

In 2025, the studio followed up with its multiplayer real-time battler Glassbreakers: Champions of Moss, which offered up a roster of 12 Champions for squad-based arena battles.

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Meta Inches Into Health Wearables with New Food Logging Feature for Ray-Ban Smart Glasses

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Meta announced it’s pushing an update to Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta smart glasses that’s slated to make nutrition tracking easier by letting Meta AI visually suss out food before you eat it.

The News

Over time, the company says that a user’s food log will inform “increasingly personalized insights that get more useful, helping you make healthier, more informed choices.”

Meta says it will be somewhat of a manual process though, as users need to prompt Meta AI to log their food in addition to inputting specific nutrition goals.

Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) | Image courtesy Meta

While we’re not there yet, Meta says in the future glasses will be able to understand what you’re eating and automatically log your food, which in turn opens up even more personalized nutrition insights since you don’t have to remember to log every meal.

For now though, the company envisions users asking Meta AI questions like “What should I eat to increase my energy?” which will output a suggestion based on your food log and fitness goals.

Meta says the new feature will be available to users aged 18+in the US “soon” across all Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta smart glasses, with its Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses getting the update sometime later this summer.

My Take

Meta doesn’t do health tracking; its smart glasses don’t track your heart rate, steps, activity, sleep (of course not), calories burned, O² levels—nothing.

Granted, they can link with Garmin smart watches which can do those things, although the glasses themselves essentially only act as a sort of audio relay, repeating the info sensed and stored by the Garmin app, meaning Meta can’t really do anything truly useful with the bulk of your health data. Notably, Meta smart glasses don’t tie into Samsung Health or Apple Health either, putting a majority of users’ health data out of Meta’s reach.

Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses & Neural Band | Image courtesy Meta

But it probably won’t always be that way. Meta seems to be leveraging what it can feasibly (and cheaply) do right now without having to cut any expensive licensing deals with dominant players in the smart watch segment.

The company does have a vector to get all of that data one day though. Meta Ray-Ban Display comes with a wrist-worn Neural Band controller that uses surface electromyography (sEMG) which lets users quietly write out messages and manipulate UI. I can imagine a near future where Neural Band has a packet of sensors similar to a smart watch, albeit without the display.

Provided Meta goes that specific route, the company wouldn’t need to integrate with existing health ecosystems at all for its future smart glasses. It will already have everything it needs to close the loop on what you’re eating and how you’re burning it off.

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