As Horizon Worlds and Rec Room withdraw from VR, VRChat says it's growing, regularly setting new usage records, and "not going anywhere".
If you missed it, back in March Meta announced that Horizon Worlds is fully pivoting to flatscreen (smartphones and web). While existing worlds will still be playable in VR, creators will no longer be able to include VR support in new worlds, and all future updates and tools will target flatscreen. The company says it's seeing significant growth on smartphones, while Quest owners tended to resent the social VR platform being pushed on them.
Just days later, Rec Room announced that it will entirely shut down in June, stating that it never reached sustained profitability and blaming "the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming".
The demise of two of the biggest social VR platforms has, understandably, led many in the industry to wonder whether the entire concept was simply not viable in today's VR market. But VRChat, which has been around since before either Horizon Worlds or Rec Room were even concepts, is adamant that this is not the case.
Ian Hamilton
At the end of March, in response to the announcements from Meta and Rec Room, VRChat issued the following statement:
"Horizon Worlds VR moved into maintenance mode. Rec Room announced yesterday that it's closing on June 1. Both were very well-funded platforms with real communities – and both are winding down. If you're reading this and you built worlds there, made friends there, had a place you liked to hang out there, or even worked there - we're sorry. Behind everything created, built, or experienced on these platforms is a lot of creativity, love, sweat, and tears. We are sad to see fewer compatriots in our space. Our heart goes out to you.In case you were wondering, VRChat is not going anywhere.
Last New Year's Eve, nearly 150,000 people were in VRChat at the same time – celebrating a worldwide event for yet another year. Most of those folks had visited us for New Years multiple times before, but for some, it was their first time.
It's been three months since, and we've broken that user record twice since then. Our latest record? Nearly 160,000 people in VRChat at the same time.
Not only that, but our creator economy, avatar marketplace, and first-party stores are all growing. Creators like Studio TrickForge, spookyghostboo, and nawty have made VRChat a place where they can create amazing communities, experiences, and identities, all while earning for their hard work. We onboard more creators every day.
The core reason we're still here, though, is you.
Our community is the thing that makes VRChat different from every platform that has come and gone. You create worlds that defy imagination. You build avatars that embody expression and identity in ways never seen before. You welcome strangers into your communities, make them feel at home, and often change their lives for the better.
You show up, every single day, in numbers that keep growing -- and you bring your friends. The loyalty, creativity, ingenuity, passion, and energy you bring to VRChat is the heartbeat that no amount of funding can replicate.
We don't take that for granted.
To anyone looking for a new home: we'd love to have you. VRChat has been here for over a decade, and we plan to be here for many more. Creators are building real careers on this platform - the tools are deep and will help you build the skills you need to begin your game development career. Our economy continues to grow. You can easily build a community that gets excited for every update you put out or each event that you run. If you're looking for somewhere your work can live and grow, VRChat is it.
To our existing community: the people that are showing up now are showing up because of what you built. They'll stick around because of how you'll welcome them. They'll learn, grow, create, share, and play because of the communities that you're a part of. Thank you for all of the hard work you put in along with us. We see you.
We have a lot of work ahead of us, and we're moving fast. But we wanted to take a moment to say this plainly: we see what's happening in our industry, we're grateful to be in the position we're in, and we're not slowing down."
As the statement notes, VRChat hit a concurrent online users record on New Year's Eve, with over 150,000 people on the platform, and the company says it has exceeded that figure multiple times since.
To be clear, despite the name, VRChat is just as popular on flatscreen as in virtual reality, and the company doesn't say how many of these concurrent users were actually in a headset. But this was the case for Horizon Worlds and Rec Room too, and this still means that at minimum tens of thousands of VR owners were online together at the same time, across hundreds of different online virtual worlds.
VRChat has a well-earned reputation as a notably less moderated platform than Horizon or Rec Room, with its far greater degree of freedom around avatar and world design enabling a much wider range of experiences - from those you'll love more than anything else you can experience in VR to those you'll absolutely hate.
If you've been put off by some of the bad vibes you might get from certain footage of VRChat, I'd encourage you to put that feeling aside, pick an avatar that expresses who you are, and try out some of the highest rated worlds on the platform. Despite all its flaws, given the size of VRChat's userbase and the possibilities its creator tools enable, there is simply no other software as deserving of the "metaverse" moniker of science fiction.
K. Guillory
"To anyone looking for a new home: we'd love to have you. VRChat has been here for over a decade, and we plan to be here for many more", the company tells the many Rec Room and Horizon Worlds VR users looking for a substitute for the places where they had spent a significant chunk of their lives.
