Once again, we’re a little late to share this news, but the vTime social VR app (renamed vTime XR) was abruptly shut down last October, and there appear to be no plans to resume the service.
According to a post on the website:
In just 10 years, vTime XR has been a place for people from all over the world to meet, chat, and share despite the distance between them. Since its launch in December 2015, more than 1.4 million people around the world have connected through the app, the first cross-reality social network. You’ve met across continents, chatted with strangers to become friends, found love, and even proposed in virtual reality. You’ve turned the virtual world into a lifeline of connection during the pandemic.
When the time comes to say goodbye, we wanted to give you plenty of reminders so you can relive your favorite memories, meet friends, and have a final farewell party right on the app.
Unfortunately, a vulnerability was recently discovered in Unity (the engine used to build vTime XR), which affects the current version of the app. As embarrassing as it is to shut down vTime XR without notice, we cannot patch vulnerabilities and risk the safety of our community by keeping the app online. Importantly, there is no evidence that this issue has been exploited or affected users.
Therefore, it is with a heavy heart that I will take vTime XR offline immediately. It’s especially difficult knowing that December 22nd marks the 10th anniversary we all wanted to celebrate together.
We know that many of you will want to keep the memories you save in the app. Your account will remain accessible through your browser until April 10, 2026, so you can download any photos, messages, or other data you want to keep. After this date, all user account data will be deleted. We also recommend deleting the vTime XR app from your device as it may no longer work and may be affected by vulnerabilities.
Surviving for almost a decade in the unstable world of social VR is rare! However, the sudden closure of the Metaverse platform is unfortunately not that unusual. I’m not familiar with the security issues identified in VTime’s underlying Unity engine (used in many virtual worlds and social VR platforms), but I’m a little surprised that the Liverpool, England-based project team felt they had no choice but to shut down without notice rather than allow users to meet other metaverse platforms (such as Cloud Party, another somewhat obscure platform) and throw a final farewell party. There is some idle speculation here. Maybe the problem went away because they realized they couldn’t afford to pay for the server fees? But we will never know for sure.
And again, I don’t believe vTime was a very popular platform to begin with. One of the limitations is that the avatars are locked in place, sitting with groups of avatars similarly glued to their seats (at least that’s how I remembered it from my last visit, probably about 7 or 8 years ago). You could change the scenery and some of the environments were beautiful, but it was basically a sit-down-and-chat app (although it did a lot of the work in VRChat and many other metaverse platforms). many better).
The last time I wrote specifically about vTime on my blog was about six years ago, on December 3, 2019 (although I did mention vTime in a 2021 blog post about recent academic research on nonverbal communication in social VR). And in all my metaverse hopping trips, I’ve come across very few. whoever Some people mentioned that they used vTime, others probably just checked it out of curiosity. Compared to popular and beloved platforms like AltspaceVR (RIP) and VRChat, vTime was a relic. I’m honestly surprised they lasted this long.
My guess is that the developer team decided it wasn’t worth the money, time, and work it would take to re-engineer the relatively unknown and little-used Metaverse platform and decided to pull the plug. It’s not a shame. It’s a respectable decision. And in the news item quoted above, they appear to offer hope for a new, fresh start.
Thank you for joining us on this amazing journey. We are forever grateful for every conversation, every laugh, and every friendship forged at our destination. We’re saying goodbye to this chapter in vTime’s history, but we can’t wait to show you what’s coming next.
You can read all my blog posts about vTime here.
PS: As mentioned in the news item quoted above, I would like to know who proposed marriage on vTime. Those people will have interesting stories to tell.
Thanks to our Metaverse friend Carlos Austin for the heads up.
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