Updated 8/17 at 5:19pm ET: The information Android Central was presented was an internal memo sent to employees, not a public post. The wording of this post has been modified to reflect that.
What you need to know
- Ready at Dawn Studios, part of Oculus Studios, is closing permanently, effective immediately.
- The studio produced some of the highest-rated VR games ever, including Lone Echo, Lone Echo 2, and Echo VR, as well as some PSP classics like God of War and Daxter.
- Meta says that Ready at Dawn employees are encouraged to apply to other studios within the Oculus Studios umbrella.
- The reduction was made to meet the new Reality Labs budgetary ceiling rather than as a proactive cost-saving initiative.
One of VR's greatest development studios is closing its doors permanently today (Aug. 7). Ready at Dawn Studios was behind the famed Echo VR and Lone Echo games, all of which received critical and customer acclaim. But the studio hasn't launched a new game since Echo VR was ported to Quest in May 2020, and it's likely sales of Lone Echo 2 could have played a part in the decision since that's a PCVR-only game.
Meta first made cuts to the studio last February when it announced it would shutter Echo VR despite still having a player count "in the low 10 thousands," as noted by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth at the time. It's worth noting that Meta just stated that Quest 3 sales are "exceeding their expectations" in the company's most recent quarterly earnings call last week.
One report in mid-July said that Meta was cutting its Reality Labs division's budget by 20% by 2026, and an internal memo sent to Meta employees by Gio Hunt, VP Oculus Studios — seen by Android Central — supports this reasoning. A Meta spokesperson told Android Central that the cuts weren't being made to "save money," per se. Rather, these cuts are being made to ensure that Reality Labs stays within the new budgetary constraints and that Oculus Studios can make a "better long-term impact" in VR development.
Meta also commented that this isn't a signal of wider cuts to the number of first-party games on Quest and that the company is still committed to VR development.
While Reality Labs has historically spent billions per quarter on development costs of XR hardware like the Meta Quest 3 and Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, VR games, and Meta AI features, the company is starting to put a hard cap on that spending each quarter.
Ready at Dawn has been a part of Oculus Studios since June 2020, just a few weeks after Echo VR was ported to the original Oculus Quest. Meta says that Ready at Dawn employees are encouraged to apply elsewhere within Oculus Studios and that the company wants to retain as many talented developers as possible.
Meta also explains that while this move shutters the entire studio, it isn't enough to trigger the California WARN Act. The WARN Act requires companies to give employees notice ahead of time if more than 50 employees are laid off in a 30-day period. All employees will receive severance pay similar to the previous rounds of Meta layoffs.
Meta didn't provide a comment when asked about the possibility of Quest ports for Lone Echo or Lone Echo 2 by other Oculus Studios developers.
