School is out for Rec Room. The social gaming platform announced on Monday that it will be shutting down this June, in spite of “reaching over 150 million players and creators along the way” since its founding in 2016.
“Despite this popularity, we never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business,” the company said in a statement. “Our costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue we brought in. “We spent a long time trying to find a way to make the numbers work.”
“But with the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming, the path to profitability has gotten tough enough that we’ve made the difficult decision to shut things down,” the statement explained.
Once valued at $3.5 billion, Rec Room is a popular, cross-platform social video game that allows players to hang out, create, and share user-generated games and virtual goods.
“Over the last decade, players made over half a billion friends on the platform, spending a cumulative 68 thousand years in Rec Room; with millions still showing up each month,” according to the announcement.
The Seattle-based Rec Room Inc. said it is pulling the plug now, while it still has the ability to wind things down “thoughtfully and do right by the people who built this with us.”
What does this mean for players?
As of Monday, users can no longer create new accounts, add a friend, or sign up for a Rec Room Plus (RR+) membership. However, active memberships are good until June 1.
On that day, players will no longer be able to log in and play Rec Room, and at noon Pacific time, the website rec.net will go offline.
How did we get here?
The news comes after two sets of layoffs last year. In August, Rec Room Inc. cut 141 jobs, bringing the staff down to just over 100 people. That’s after March layoffs cut 16% of its workforce, according to GeekWire.