Meta, the parent company of Ready at Dawn, which developed The Order: 1866 VR and Lone Echo VR, has reportedly closed the studio. Android Central reports that the closure of the studio is part of a plan to reduce the budget at the company's Reality LabsVR division, which was reported in July.
Ready at Dawn, founded in 2003, developed games for PlayStation platforms before shifting its focus to VR development after the release of Lone Echo on the Oculus rift in 2017. Echo VR, a standalone multiplayer spinoff, was released in 2017. However, it was closed by the studio in August 2023 despite its success in the VR industry.
But there was no project next: Ready at Dawn released Lone Echo 2 in 2021, a year after Meta acquired the studio.
The number of people affected has not been revealed. Meta, however, reportedly stated that the number was not high enough to trigger California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act), which applies to employees with 50 or more. Meta's 2023 layoffs had a significant impact on Ready at Dawn.
Meta's Reality Labs has been losing money at a rate of nearly $50 billion over the last four years. Will shutting down one of the few studios that did something interesting with VR change those fortunes? I'm going with probably not: I do not know how much Ready at Dawn's employees made, but I would guess that it was a small portion of the estimated $9 billion Reality Labs lost in the first six month of 2024.
I've contacted Meta to ask for a comment on the reported closing and will update this post if I get a response.
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