The Seattle-based social gaming platform Rec Room is closing its virtual doors today at noon Pacific time, bringing an end to a decade-long journey that connected 150 million players across a virtual college campus where users created worlds and forged lasting friendships.
Founded in 2016 by former engineers from Microsoft, the startup attracted $294 million in investment funding and reached a peak valuation of $3.5 billion in 2021. However, the company ultimately struggled to achieve profitability, leading to its March announcement about the impending closure.
Co-founder and former CEO Nick Fajt expressed gratitude in an email statement, thanking everyone involved in the decade-long journey. He described Rec Room as an extraordinary place created by an exceptional group of people, calling it an absolute pleasure to build such a fun and welcoming world together.
The company released an end credits video overnight that runs over four minutes, concluding with the message: “We created another dimension. With the span of our attention.”
Among the financial challenges Rec Room faced were slim profit margins on user-generated content, which formed a core part of the platform’s appeal. The company retained only approximately 30 cents per dollar from player-created content after covering app store fees and creator payments, contrasting sharply with the roughly 70 cents per dollar earned from its own first-party content.
After announcing the closure, a dedicated internal team developed tools enabling players to export their room data and avatars in standard file formats, preserving the creative work they had invested in the platform. Tyler Wolf Leonhardt, principal tech lead for user-generated content, described this effort as creating “an ending done right” in a blog post about the project.
Leonhardt emphasized that players had invested their hearts and souls into the product, transforming ideas from their imagination into reality. The team wanted to ensure these creations could continue existing in a way that made players proud.
Users embraced the school theme one final time through various farewell activities. Fan-created websites allowed players to upload their platform-issued “report cards” summarizing statistics like friends made and rooms visited, signing them like traditional yearbooks.
The closure reflects a broader industry trend away from social virtual reality. Meta has been shifting focus from the VR version of Horizon Worlds toward a mobile edition, as the company redirects its attention to artificial intelligence and smart glasses technology.
VRChat, an alternative platform launched in 2014, has positioned itself as a potential new home for former Rec Room users. Co-founders Graham Gaylor and Jesse Joudrey assured users that VRChat “is not going anywhere,” pointing to record traffic levels and an expanding creator economy, though the platform has acknowledged its own challenges regarding predatory behavior and implemented various safeguards.
Following the shutdown announcement, Snap acquired select assets from Rec Room, bringing some employees into the Snapchat parent company’s hardware division to develop its augmented reality Specs glasses. Fajt now works at Snap as a director of product management according to his LinkedIn profile.
Former employees seeking new opportunities have created Rec Room Grads, a website listing available workers including engineers, moderators, and trust-and-safety staff, while also showcasing those who have already secured positions elsewhere in the industry.
On the Rec Room subreddit, players are spending their final hours saying farewell. Some users logged in for the first time in years, with one person expressing how memories of playing VR with friends brought them to tears. Others posted countdowns and coordinated their time zones to gather one last time in the virtual Rec Center.
One parent sought community advice for their autistic son who was distraught about the closure and worried about maintaining friendships formed on the platform. Community members suggested saving photos before the shutdown, exchanging Discord contacts to preserve friendships, and exploring fan-run servers that aim to keep versions of Rec Room playable after the official closure.
One user described a final party in the Rec Center, distributing virtual food, exchanging gifts, and taking one last group photograph before the end, expressing hope that it wouldn’t truly be their final logout.