Updated 8/17 at 5:19 PM ET: The information provided to Android Central was an internal memo sent to employees, not a public post. The wording of this post has been edited to reflect that.
What you need to know
- Ready at Dawn Studios, part of Oculus Studios, will be permanently closing, effective immediately.
- The studio has produced some of the highest-rated VR games of all time, including Lone Echo, Lone Echo 2, and Echo VR, as well as some PSP classics like God of War and Daxter.
- Meta says Ready at Dawn employees are welcome to apply to other studios under the Oculus Studios umbrella.
- This reduction was made to meet Reality Labs’ new budget cap and not as a proactive cost-saving initiative.
One of the greatest VR studios has permanently closed its doors today (August 7). Ready at Dawn Studios was behind the popular Echo VR and Lone Echo games, both of which received critical and customer acclaim. But the studio hasn’t released a new game since porting the Echo VR to the Quest in May 2020, and it’s possible that sales of Lone Echo 2 may have played a role in the decision since it was a VR-only game.
Meta had already made cuts to the studio back in February when it announced it was shutting down Echo VR despite the fact that the player count was still “around 10,000,” Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth noted at the time. It’s worth noting that Meta just said Quest 3 sales were “exceeding our expectations” in the company’s latest quarterly earnings call last week.
In mid-July, a report said Meta was cutting its Reality Labs budget by 20% by 2026, and an internal memo sent to Meta employees by Oculus Studios VP Geo Hunt — seen by Android Central — supports that reasoning. A Meta spokesperson told Android Central that the cuts weren’t “to save money” per se. Instead, they’re being made to ensure Reality Labs stays within the new budget constraints and that Oculus Studios can make a “better long-term impact” in 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 remains committed to VR development.
While Reality Labs has historically spent billions of dollars each quarter on development costs for XR devices like the Meta Quest 3, Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, VR gaming, and Meta AI features, the company has begun to put a hard cap on that spending each quarter.
Ready at Dawn has been part of Oculus Studios since June 2020, just weeks after the Echo VR was ported to the original Oculus Quest. Meta says Ready at Dawn employees are welcome to apply for positions elsewhere within Oculus Studios and that the company wants to retain as many talented developers as possible.
Meta also clarified that while the move would result in the studio being shut down entirely, it would not trigger California’s WARN Act. The WARN Act requires companies to notify employees in advance if more than 50 employees are laid off within a 30-day period. All employees will receive severance pay, similar to previous rounds of layoffs at Meta.
Meta did not provide any comment when asked about the possibility of Quest ports for the Lone Echo or Lone Echo 2 by other Oculus Studios developers.
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