VR Social Game Rec Room Is Shutting Down on its 10th Anniversary: 'Our Costs Always Ended Up Overwhelming the Revenue We Brought In'

Rec Room — the virtual reality social club where you play games, hang out in the locker room, customize your appearance, and party with friends — is shutting down on its 10th anniversary. Despite reaching over 150 million players and offering VR games like Paintball, Dodgeball, 3D Charades, and Disc Golf — a cumulative 68,000 years have been spent in-game — developer Against Gravity admitted "we never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business." "Our costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue we brought in," the team said in a statement. "We spent a long time trying to find a way to make the numbers work. But with the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming, the path to profitability has gotten tough enough that we've made the difficult decision to shut things down. "We're making this decision now, while we still have the ability to wind things down thoughtfully and do right by the people who built this with us," the team added. This means that from June 1, you won't be able to log into or play Rec Room, the website will go offline, and any online services related to the game will no longer be available. As a result, from here on in no one can make a new account, you can't add any new friends, and all premium memberships have been extended to June 1. Partnered content creators will also stop accepting new registrations from May 1. Perhaps most notably of all the changes, users can no longer create monetized user-generated content, such as room inventory items, consumables, currencies, and avatar items. After March Room Rewards go out in April, there'll be no further Room Reward payments, and from May 1, you won't be able to purchase tokens or redeem gift cards for tokens. Creators will be able to collect any previously-earned tokens until May 18. "This f***ing sucks, man," wrote one unhappy fan. "I've had multiple MMOs and online games I enjoyed shut down, so I know how much it sucks. It's gotta be even worse for a purely social experience like Rec Room." "Sad, but given its whole gimmick was 'Roblox for VR', the writing was on the wall as soon as Roblox added VR support, as well as the stagnation of that medium in general," added someone else. Back in August 2025, Rec Room was forced to lay off around half its team, but said at the time that even if "nothing about the business changed or improved, our runway would probably carry us into 2029." It also said at the time that in July 2025, its user-generated content revenue was "the highest it's ever been," up 70% year-over-year. Now, however, it seems that that 2029 projection was unduly positive. "On behalf of the team we’d like to thank you for being a part of the Rec Room community and helping us create a fun and welcoming place for players from all walks of life over the past ~10 years," the team concluded. "Your boundless creativity and enthusiasm has been a source of great inspiration and joy. We wish we could have found a way to keep things rolling, but unfortunately this is the end of the road." As a last thank you to the millions of players that have enjoyed the game over the last decade, Rec Room is discounting all first-party content in all stores by 80%, and some premium-only features like avatar items will be free. You'll also be able to download all your photos and collect a super-cute final report card as a memento of your avatar — you can find out how on the official website. Sadly, creators can't download a working copy of their rooms as without their servers, they won't work, but you can download your room and invention data should you want to recreate the room in Unity, for example. While the social mini-game experience seems as popular as ever going by Roblox's success, VR overall has taken a bit of a beating. In January, Meta laid off around 10% of staff at its Reality Labs division as part of sweeping cuts set to affect more than 1,000 people. This includes the closure of a number of VR-first studios, such as Twisted Pixel, the studio behind Deadpool VR, Resident Evil 4 VR developer Armature Studio, and Asgard's Wrath maker, Sanzaru Games. Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Jat AI

Mar 31, 2026 - 12:00

VR Social Game Rec Room Is Shutting Down on its 10th Anniversary: 'Our Costs Always Ended Up Overwhelming the Revenue We Brought In'

Rec Room — the virtual reality social club where you play games, hang out in the locker room, customize your appearance, and party with friends — is shutting down on its 10th anniversary.

Despite reaching over 150 million players and offering VR games like Paintball, Dodgeball, 3D Charades, and Disc Golf — a cumulative 68,000 years have been spent in-game — developer Against Gravity admitted "we never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business."

"Our costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue we brought in," the team said in a statement. "We spent a long time trying to find a way to make the numbers work. But with the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming, the path to profitability has gotten tough enough that we've made the difficult decision to shut things down.

"We're making this decision now, while we still have the ability to wind things down thoughtfully and do right by the people who built this with us," the team added.

This means that from June 1, you won't be able to log into or play Rec Room, the website will go offline, and any online services related to the game will no longer be available. As a result, from here on in no one can make a new account, you can't add any new friends, and all premium memberships have been extended to June 1. Partnered content creators will also stop accepting new registrations from May 1.

Perhaps most notably of all the changes, users can no longer create monetized user-generated content, such as room inventory items, consumables, currencies, and avatar items. After March Room Rewards go out in April, there'll be no further Room Reward payments, and from May 1, you won't be able to purchase tokens or redeem gift cards for tokens. Creators will be able to collect any previously-earned tokens until May 18.

"This f***ing sucks, man," wrote one unhappy fan. "I've had multiple MMOs and online games I enjoyed shut down, so I know how much it sucks. It's gotta be even worse for a purely social experience like Rec Room."

"Sad, but given its whole gimmick was 'Roblox for VR', the writing was on the wall as soon as Roblox added VR support, as well as the stagnation of that medium in general," added someone else.

Back in August 2025, Rec Room was forced to lay off around half its team, but said at the time that even if "nothing about the business changed or improved, our runway would probably carry us into 2029." It also said at the time that in July 2025, its user-generated content revenue was "the highest it's ever been," up 70% year-over-year. Now, however, it seems that that 2029 projection was unduly positive.

"On behalf of the team we’d like to thank you for being a part of the Rec Room community and helping us create a fun and welcoming place for players from all walks of life over the past ~10 years," the team concluded. "Your boundless creativity and enthusiasm has been a source of great inspiration and joy. We wish we could have found a way to keep things rolling, but unfortunately this is the end of the road."

As a last thank you to the millions of players that have enjoyed the game over the last decade, Rec Room is discounting all first-party content in all stores by 80%, and some premium-only features like avatar items will be free. You'll also be able to download all your photos and collect a super-cute final report card as a memento of your avatar — you can find out how on the official website.

Sadly, creators can't download a working copy of their rooms as without their servers, they won't work, but you can download your room and invention data should you want to recreate the room in Unity, for example.

While the social mini-game experience seems as popular as ever going by Roblox's success, VR overall has taken a bit of a beating. In January, Meta laid off around 10% of staff at its Reality Labs division as part of sweeping cuts set to affect more than 1,000 people. This includes the closure of a number of VR-first studios, such as Twisted Pixel, the studio behind Deadpool VR, Resident Evil 4 VR developer Armature Studio, and Asgard's Wrath maker, Sanzaru Games.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

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