Social VR platform Rec Room announced it’s laying off around half of its staff, citing low-level content which has flooded the platform from users on mobile and console.
Founded in 2016, the studio was once valued at $3.5 billion following its most recent funding round in 2021, which brought the Seattle-based company $145 million, making it one of the most valuable XR companies to date.
As an early adopter of user-generated content (UGC), Rec Room was also one of the first in the space to incentivize creators by letting them sell their creations for in-game tokens, which could be exchanged for real cash—following a monetization strategy similar to Roblox.
Now, the company has announced wide-sweeping layoffs in a blogpost, authored by company co-founders Cameron Brown and Nick Fajt. According to a statement provided to GeekWire, Rec Room now has just over 100 employees following the cuts.
The studio says departing employees will receive three months of pay, six months of health benefits, and the option to keep their computers.
This is likely the beginning of the end
I have not been there in a very long time. Not sure if many people are still playing.
All hail our AI developer overlords pepeW
Well i wanted to try Rec Room several times. But even 4-5 years ago i was instantly greeted by a virtual kindergarten with dozens of kids just dicking around. Some of them instantly approached me while i still was just figuring things out. Good for them having such a cool virtual playground. I could have only dreamed of such a cool place back in my time. But i was starting to get gray hair at the time and instantly felt uncomfortable. Like sure i could have hanged out with them but it was instantly just too much high energy, man. Like, i’m good with just instantly logging out. Thanks.
