Note: No generative AI was used to create this blog post.
In another sign of what I call “metaverse winter,” Rec Room, a popular social VR platform for kids, is set to close. A website update posted yesterday, March 30, 2026, includes the following press release:
Rec Room will close at noon Pacific Time on June 1, 2026.
Over the past 10 years, Rec Room has grown to incredible scale, reaching over 150 million players and creators. Players have made over 500 million friends on the platform. People around the world spent a total of $68,000. years In the recording studio. The best UGC rooms each have over 500 years of play time. So many people are having a great time.
What this community has built together is amazing and something we will always be proud of. Even today, millions of people come every month to spend time in this fun and welcoming place.
Despite its popularity, we never figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainable, profitable business. Our costs have always dwarfed the revenue we earn.
We spent a long time trying to figure out how to calculate the numbers. However, recent changes in the VR market and broader headwinds in gaming have made the path to profitability so difficult that we have made the difficult decision to wind down the business.
We’re making this decision now, but we still have the ability to carefully wrap things up and do the right thing by the people who created this with us.
This is breaking news and we will update this blog post as we learn more. We expected smaller Metaverse platforms to close during the current Metaverse winter, but we didn’t expect Rec Room to be one of them! I expect there will be a lot of commentary from the user base about this decision. You can see all of our previous blog posts about Rec Room here.
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