Facebook and Oculus Rift owners Meta are said to be shutting down Ready At Dawn Studios, the team behind the excellent Echo VR and Lone Echo games, as part of wider cuts at the company's Reality Labs division.
The report in question comes from Android Central, which cited internal Reality Labs memos. According to the site's Nicholas Sutrich, the purpose of the shutdown was that Reality Labs ” [its] This follows a report in mid-July that Meta was planning to cut Reality Labs' budget by 20% through 2026.
A spokesperson for Meta also told the site that the Reality Labs outages were not evidence of cuts in the number of first-party games on Quest VR headsets, and that Meta is still committed to VR development. Meta announced that Quest 3 sales “exceeded expectations” during the company's most recent quarterly earnings call last week.
While Meta has yet to officially comment, former Ready At Dawn developers have been reacting to the news on social media, sharing memories of the studio. “After my previous employer went bankrupt and I spent 3 months fruitlessly searching for work in the UK, Ready At Dawn granted me a visa to come to the US,” wrote character technical artist Sol Brennan. “I came to the US with just $300 and two suitcases. And my job at Ready at Dawn. 10 years later, I have two (.5) GDC talks, several critically acclaimed games published under my belt, my own home, and a wonderfully supportive network of friends.”
“I became eligible to become a U.S. citizen this November,” Brennan continued. “None of this would have happened if Ready At Dawn hadn’t given me this chance. While the American dream may be propaganda… I can definitely say I’m living it.”
Meta acquired Ready At Dawn for its Oculus operations in June 2020. Developers’ Lone Echo is one of our favourite VR games, but Ready At Dawn also has a proud history of porting Sony’s God Of War and Jak & Daxter series to PlayStation portables. Their original fantasy cover shooter The Order: 1886 was less well-received, but stood out for its brilliant period art direction and PS4-melting graphics. Critics I respect have described it as a cult classic. I’ve been meaning to give it a shot – it’s a shame you can’t find it on PC.
I wish the best of luck to everyone looking for a job at Ready At Dawn.