Rec Room is the latest VR metaverse closure — but I have hopes it'll return in AR

• Rec Room is shutting down in June
• The popular metaverse platform struggled to turn its success into profit
• Snap is reportedly buying up some Rec Room assets

Rec Room — a popular VR multiplayer platform that reached over 150 million players during its lifetime — is shutting down in June as the company explains, "Our costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue we brought in." But it might live on in AR.

This follows the semi-shutdown of Meta’s Horizon Worlds metaverse. That title will live on in full on mobile, and will be playable in VR — but the once-flagship immersive experience on Quest headsets won’t receive updates or new content, as Meta shifts its focus to smartphones and glasses.

For Rec Room, a similar shift seems to be on the cards too.

While not much is revealed in the School’s Out for Rec Room blog post, which details the final days for the platform — such as 80% discounts, the removal of some RR+ membership exclusivity for certain items and for cashing out tokens, and the ability to download your created rooms as a standalone Unity app (only via the Steam PC build) — it’s being reported that the team’s efforts may be reborn in a form under Snap.

The Snapchat and AR glasses-maker has reportedly acquired some Rec Room Inc. assets, including a few employees, according to Geek Wire. It hasn’t been confirmed what they’ll be doing, but based on my experience with Snapchat’s specs, I have an educated guess that these former Rec Room developers will help make Snap’s AR software the virtual playground I’m dreaming of.

The metaverse’s AR future?

I’ve loved VR multiplayer, but having experienced AR multiplayer with Snap’s Spectacles, the in-person digital experience is a cut above, even in my admittedly limited demo.

Peridot multiplayer let a group of us see and interact with each other’s virtual pets, we could draw and create 3D art together in the room, and while not a game per se, multi-person AR translation with floating subtitles under each speaker felt like magic.

Even though the actual gameplay of these apps wasn’t mindblowing, the virtual and real blended experience was a delight — and my mind was racing with what the future could hold.

With a pair of AR smart specs, you could turn a park into an AR paintball arena for you and your friends, turn your living room into a jungle adventure, or your back garden into a tennis court — the list goes on.

An AR version of Rec Room, with its blend of premade and user-generated content, could be a killer AR app. Rather than waiting for someone to make the AR game you’ve been wishing for, you’d have the tools to simply build it yourself.

Now, there’s no promise that this is what Snap has planned, but from my conversations and demos with the team there, it’s clear the company has lofty AR aspirations — so this kind of move wouldn’t be out of the question. We’ll just have to wait and see what it has up its sleeve when its glasses debut later this year.

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