Meta Announces Closure of ReadyatDawn VR Game Studio

TapTechNews August 8th news, social media giant Meta announced that it will immediately close its VR game studio ReadyatDawn. This studio has developed the highly-acclaimed Echo series of VR games.

According to TapTechNews, ReadyatDawn was founded in 2003 and was initially known for developing handheld games. It has created classic works such as Daxter, God of War: Chains of Olympus, and God of War: Ghost of Sparta for the Sony PSP platform. In 2015, the studio entered the console game market and launched the highly-anticipated action adventure game The Order: 1886. Later, it also tried the multiplayer competitive game Transformer Fighter.

With the maturity of VR technology, ReadyatDawn turned to VR game development in 2018 and launched the widely-popular EchoArena and LoneEcho. MetaOculus acquired this studio in 2023. In the same year, due to the decrease in the number of players, Meta closed the free game EchoVR.

This closure of ReadyatDawn is part of Meta's cost-cutting plan. Since 2023, the company has laid off more than 20,000 people, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg called it the Year of Efficiency. Meta also plans to cut the budget of the RealityLabs department by 20% by 2026, which is responsible for developing VR and AR hardware.