Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Reality Labs, is shutting down video game developer Ready at Dawn.
As reported by Android Central, an internal memo revealed that the studio was closing effective immediately. Perplexingly enough, Meta also told their employees that this wasn’t about the company having to save on costs. Instead, they proactively closed the studio so that the VR division as a whole could stay under budget.
Meta won’t comment on the report in public, and it seems that they have enough legal outs to keep it under wraps. They also told Ready at Dawn employees that this studio closure isn’t going to trigger California’s WARN law; so they won’t be compelled to reveal details on the layoffs. Meta does encourage Ready at Dawn staff to apply at their other game studios, but since all of this isn’t officially confirmed, we don’t know how many of them can be retained.
Android Central refers to Ready at Dawn as the producer of some of the highest rated VR games ever made, in the Lone Echo franchise. Of course, before they were sold to Meta, we knew the studio as one of the most prolific studios on PlayStation consoles. To be clear, they were never owned by Sony. But most of their pre-VR library was on PlayStation.
Ready at Dawn’s PlayStation gameography included Daxter, the God of War games on PlayStation Portable, and God of War Origins: Collection on the PlayStation 3. Their final game for Sony is the now infamous The Order: 1886, a third person action adventure shooter notable for its poor critical reception in what was otherwise a stellar PlayStation 4 lineup.
While The Order: 1886 did have its fans, the poor critical reception was clearly the reason for Ready at Dawn to end their working relationship with Sony. Shinobi602 claimed on Twitter that they had ‘awesome plans’ in place for a sequel to The Order: 1886. The studio is never going to get the chance to reexplore those ideas now.
But it would be unfair to dismiss Ready at Dawn’s history after that. In fact, their Echo Arena, AKA Echo VR, emerged as one of the first significant multiplayer games on VR. Ready at Dawn initially had a deal with Intel for their Lone Echo games, but they were acquired by Meta last 2020.
Last year, Meta already made layoffs at the studio, so it seemed like the wheels were already set in motion for this a while back. Whether you were a fan of the studio and its games or not, it’s unfortunate that it is now the latest game studio to join the wave of layoffs and studio closures in the industry. We wish the exiting staff at Ready at Dawn well, and hope they can find their way back into making video games.
