As Rec Room Shuts Down VRChat Builds 'For The Long Term'
Rec Room closes June 1 while planning a tool for creators to download their work.
The startup behind Rec Room announced the imminent closure of its network on June 1.
In the closure note, copied below in its entirety to save for posterity, Rec Room promised a tool available from Steam in about a week allowing creators to download their room and invention data “in formats that can help you recreate the room elsewhere if you choose." It’s important to note that while Meta leadership changed course to keep Horizon Worlds online after first announcing closure on a similar timescale, they still have made no similar promise that would allow creators to download their work for use elsewhere.
Dr. Ruth Diaz noted in a post on this site that Meta still needs to make amends to its Horizon creators, writing that it should “give creators full ability to export and move their worlds, complete and intact, to other applications. Unwall the gardens before you abandon them.”
As long-time believers in VR feel the air sucked out of their lungs at the 10-year anniversary of PC VR, Good VR reached out to VRChat for comment and received the following statement:
These are hard times for the space, and our hearts go out to the Rec Room team and their community. For Horizon Worlds, regardless of where it lands, this instability is tough on its creators, players, and team. Building social platforms is really difficult work, and these moments deeply affect real people. VRChat is in a strong position. We're continuing to grow, hitting new concurrency records, and actively investing in the platform. What's kept us here is our community -- their creativity, their ingenuity, and the fact that they show up every single day. We don't take that for granted. VRChat is not going anywhere. We're hiring, and we're building for the long term.
Here’s the post from Rec Room announcing closure titled “School’s out for Rec Room”:
Rec Room will be closing down on June 1st 2026 at noon Pacific time.
Over the past decade, Rec Room grew into something amazing, reaching over 150 million players and creators along the way. Players made over half a billion friends on the platform. In total, people all around the world spent a cumulative 68 thousand years in Rec Room. The top UGC rooms saw over 500 years of play time each. That’s a lot of people having a lot of fun.
What this community built together is incredible, and something we’ll always be proud of. Even today, millions of people are showing up to spend time in this fun and welcoming place every month.
Despite this popularity, we never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business. 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.
We’re making this decision now, while we still have the ability to wind things down thoughtfully and do right by the people who built this with us.
So what does this mean exactly?
On June 1st:
You will no longer be able to login to and play Rec Room
The rec.net website will go offline.
Online services related to Rec Room Studio will no longer be available.
In preparation for the impending shutdown, as of this update the following things are changing:
You can no longer create new accounts
You can no longer add someone as a friend
You can no longer sign up for Rec Room+ (RR+)
If you have an active RR+ membership, that membership is extended to June 1st.
We have removed the RR+ requirement from Partnered Creator. Anyone with sufficient tokens can choose to cash them out.
New registrations for Partnered Creator will be halted on May 1st.
You will no longer receive token rewards (e.g., at the end of an RRO)
You can no longer create new monetized UGC content, including:
Room inventory items and offers
Room keys, consumables, and currencies
Avatar items (in-game and Avatar Studio)
The Room Rewards program has ended. March Room Rewards will be paid out in early April.
You can no longer purchase or receive new Roomie Energy
As a thank you to our players:
We are discounting first party content in all stores by 80%
Some RR+ only features (e.g., avatar items, custom emoji, auras, body paint) will no longer require RR+
After May 1st:"
You will no longer be able to purchase tokens or any $-denominated offers.
You can no longer redeem gift cards for tokens.
After May 18th (at 11:59 PM UTC):
You will not be able to earn any more tokens as a creator. You can still collect any previously-earned tokens.
You can continue to spend the tokens you have until June 1st.
Downloading Data
We understand that people will want to download their data, and we want to help as much as we can.
For Players:
You can download all the photos you’ve taken - follow the instructions here
You can download a “final report card” that is a memento of your avatar - follow the instructions here
For Creators:
Unfortunately, you cannot download a working copy of your rooms. We know that would be ideal. But without the Rec Room servers operational that is not possible.
Instead, we are providing the ability to download your room and invention data in formats that can help you recreate the room elsewhere if you choose (e.g., as a standalone Unity app)
Room/invention data downloads only work via the Steam PC build, so please install that if you want to download room/invention data.
Note: This functionality is in final internal testing and will be available in a Steam PC update ~one week from today. Room/invention data downloads will be available until June 1st.
To download room and/or invention data - follow the instructions here
Thank you
On behalf of the team we’d like to thank you for being a part of the Rec Room community and helping us create a fun and welcoming place for players from all walks of life over the past ~10 years. Your boundless creativity and enthusiasm has been a source of great inspiration and joy. We wish we could have found a way to keep things rolling, but unfortunately this is the end of the road.
We’d also like to thank everyone who has been part of the amazing Rec Room team over the years. It has been an honor and a career highlight to work with the talented, creative and dedicated Rec Room team. Thank you for your innumerable contributions to something that brought a lot of joy (and some heartache!) into the world.
Over the years, Gribbly often described Rec Room as “an explosion of love and creativity all around the world”. We hope it was that for you. It certainly was for us.
