Fans allege the Duffer Brothers used the chatbot to write the finale without any substantial proof
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If you need to get your devices back up to speed, you can do it quickly and easily.
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Also: what’s the ‘AAAA’ game Eidos Montreal has spent seven years working on?
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Mark Darrah has released a lengthy postmortem on the loot shooter that’s worth watching
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The ASUS PRIME GeForce RTX 5070 card is a gaming beast that’s small form factor friendly to give your build serious power in a small package.
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Save $70 on the Shokz OpenRun Pro bone conduction headphones for a limited time at Amazon.
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In 2023, Meta evicted some of their most engaged users from their highly customized Oculus Homes in PC VR systems.
Overnight, users found themselves losing years of effort and love they poured into those places in VR. That same year Meta shut down beloved zero-g sport Echo VR and closed the studio behind the game, Ready At Dawn.
Players flew a plane over the offices at Meta with the message “Don’t Kill VR Esports” but they still found themselves booted from the place on Meta’s servers where they made friends and weathered the early days of the pandemic.
While we reported Armature, Twisted Pixel and Sanzaru Games joining the list of studios shut down by Meta, another product acquired by Mark Zuckerberg’s team “will no longer receive new content or feature updates”, according to a note posted to the official Supernatural group on Facebook.
That’s a very corporate way of saying that the coaches who defined the fitness service Supernatural – humans like Leanne Pedante credited by some of the service’s users for saving their lives – are now also no longer welcome on Meta’s servers.
Supernatural users can still log in and interact with the ghosts of their fitness coaches, like the laugh track on an old TV show, but the coaches that helped so many will not be making new appearances in headset.
“What the fuck,” wrote one user on the official Supernatural Community group with 60 upvotes. “I am so sorry for all the amazing coaches who are losing jobs and the people in the background. And so upset that the only thing I’ve consistently loved for exercise is ending. What happens when song license is over?”
Another comment with more than 600 upvotes: “If you’re no longer updating the content, there should no longer be a yearly fee. If content is and will remain static, there should be a one time charge.”
“As a user since the beginning, I feel like my heart’s been ripped out!” wrote another.
Meta directed subscribers with questions to email support.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a Wasteland snail disguised as Bethesda’s legendary designer
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Smash Drums’ new campaign mode, “God of Drums,” is now available on PlayStation VR2 after previously releasing on Quest in early access.
First launched last November for Meta Quest in early access, the new Smash Drums campaign mode is rocking its way to PlayStation VR2 today. The free campaign update, dubbed ‘God of Drums,’ adds more than 100 missions, along with new legendary skins for the drummer’s head and drumsticks. The gameplay unfolds in new areas, unlike the sprawling stadiums the base modes feature. As I mentioned in my impressions that “a career mode would be welcome,” this update is a nice surprise for more goal-oriented rhythm players.
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Accessible through the Arcade Mode in the Main Menu, players start as a lowly novice, making their way through a path akin to a lightning strike, all the way to becoming a God of Drums in an RPG-style progression system. Depending on the performance of every song played, new missions will be unlocked based on the number of stars obtained. To unlock the new level players gesture into the air like a real rockstar.
Each mission rotates among the Arcade, Fusion, and Classic modes. These styles change how to hit the notes: from a classic drum kit to seeing the cymbal or snare arrive from a distance to a more Rock Band-inspired style, with notes descending to respective colors to hit at a precise time. As suggested by PotamWorks, the new mode should last anywhere between three and six hours.
Smash Drums’ new campaign mode, God of Drums, is available now on Quest and PlayStation VR2.
Against the backdrop of a broader shuffling of its Reality Labs division, Meta is reportedly closing Armature Studio, Twisted Pixel, and Sanzaru Games, three studios that Meta had previously acquired. The studios were behind some of the company’s biggest first-party VR games, including Deadpool VR, Asgard’s Wrath, and the Resident Evil 4 Quest port.
According to reports by Kotaku and Bloomberg, Meta is shuttering the three studios this week and laying off most or all of their staff.
Among the three studios, Sanzaru Games was the first to be acquired in 2019. The studio was known for the Asgard’s Wrath series, the first of which was released on Meta’s PC VR platform, and the sequel on its Quest platform. Twisted Pixel was acquired in 2022 and was known for Deadpool VR which was released barely two months ago. Armature Studio was behind the Resident Evil 4 port for Quest.
Starting in 2019, Meta acquired nine prominent VR studios. With today’s news, the company has now shuttered the majority of those studios. Here’s the scorecard as we know it:
The cluster of new closures comes against a backdrop of a broader shuffling of Meta’s Reality Labs division. The last few months have seen lots of reporting about Meta shifting some focus away from immersive VR devices and toward more AI-focused devices like the company’s Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses.
It would seem this moment could be the largest reorganization of the division since Meta first dubbed its AR/VR division “Reality Labs” back in 2020. The company is reportedly laying off 10% of the Reality Labs workforce, which appears to include this latest round of studio closures.
The post Meta Reportedly Closes Three First-party Studios Behind Some of Its Biggest VR Games appeared first on Road to VR.
Shift Up’s CEO thinks it’s the only way to compete with studios from China
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The director’s final game, Masters of Albion, releases this year
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Meta shut down Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR).
The New York Times reported earlier that Meta is laying off more than 10% of its Reality Labs division, specifically targeting teams working on VR and Horizon Worlds.
Now, UploadVR can confirm that these layoffs are being conducted today, and we’ve seen a document indicating the entirety of three of Meta’s acquired VR games studios are affected: Twisted Pixel Games, Sanzaru Games, and Armature.
Twisted Pixel Games was founded in 2006 and mostly made Xbox games published by Microsoft for the first decade of its existence. In fact, Microsoft owned the studio from 2011 until 2015, when it became an independent company again.
UploadVRJoe Durbin
On contract from Facebook, between 2017 and 2019 Twisted Pixel released four VR games:
UploadVRPete Austin
In 2022, Twisted Pixel Games was acquired by Meta. And just two months ago, it released what it had been working on since then: Deadpool VR, the latest Quest-exclusive VR game.
That Meta is shutting down the studio already strongly suggests the $50 exclusive did not sell as well as the company had hoped, or that it didn’t spur enough new Quest headset sales, the real purpose of Meta’s high-budget content.
Sanzaru Games was also founded in 2006, and made a combination of its own games and contract titles for companies such as Sony, porting the original God of War series to PS Vita.
UploadVRDavid Jagneaux
Sanzaru Games was also contracted by Facebook to build VR games for the Oculus Rift and its Touch controllers, between 2016 and 2019:
In 2020, Sanzaru Games was acquired by Facebook, and in 2023 released Asgard’s Wrath 2, taking the core essence of Asgard’s Wrath to Quest 2 and Quest 3 standalone, with a semi-open world and a campaign more than 60 hours long.
UploadVRHenry Stockdale
Exactly one year ago, Sanzaru released the last major content update for Asgard’s Wrath 2, stating that it was now working on the “next big thing” with no detail released on what that would be before the studio closed.
Founded in 2008, Armature Studio was mainly a porting studio, bringing PC titles to consoles and console titles to PS Vita.
Like Twisted Pixel and Sanzaru, Armature too was contracted by Facebook to build early consumer VR games:
UploadVRJamie Feltham
Armature was acquired by Meta in 2022, and many VR gamers had been eagerly anticipating what it had been working on since. Whatever it was, Armature too is now shut down.
These are not the first acquired VR game studios Meta has eliminated.
In 2024, the company shut down Lone Echo and Echo Arena creator Ready At Dawn. And last year it merged Onward developer Downpour Interactive into Camouflaj, the developer of Batman: Arkham Shadow, after ceasing development of the VR shooter.
UploadVRIan Hamilton
According to the documents UploadVR saw, four studios still remain active at Meta:
Beat Saber and Population: One are live service games, and there’s no indication of a sequel arriving for either. For Camouflaj, four months ago the voice actor for Commissioner Gordon confirmed that a Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel was about to enter development. It’s unclear whether this is still happening, though UploadVR can confirm that Camouflaj is not on the shutdown list.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
The closure of three studios is part of a wider strategy shift at Meta seeing funding from VR reallocated toward smart glasses, a reaction to the sales momentum the company saw last year for each type of device.
Through at least the first three quarters of the year, Quest headset sales were down compared to 2024. Meanwhile, sales of Ray-Ban Meta glasses skyrocketed, with several variants selling as fast as they can be manufactured.
Last month, Meta officially confirmed “shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables”, and the closures of Twisted Pixel, Sanzaru, and Armature are some of the first casualties of this shift.
Monolith’s canned Batman game was going to feature segments where you controlled the Tumbler
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The departure comes amid the game engine company’s ongoing identity crisis
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The Charizard, Venusaur, and Blastoise set is already being listed for more than a grand
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Cory in the House has a long history of being memed to the top of user ratings, and it’s experiencing a new surge right now
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Meta is laying off more than 10% of its Reality Labs division, specifically targeting VR and Horizon Worlds, The New York Times reports.
Reality Labs, if you’re unaware, is the division of Meta behind its Quest headsets, Horizon software, smart glasses, and sEMG wristband, as well as researching future technologies such as Codec Avatars and true AR glasses.
The New York Times estimates Reality Labs at roughly 15,000 staff, suggesting that more than 1500 could be losing their job.
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has scheduled an all-hands meeting for tomorrow, both the NYT and Business Insider claim, describing it as the “most important” of the year.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
The report comes just over a month after Meta officially confirmed “shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables”, a statement which itself followed early reports of the cuts from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Insider.
“Within our overall Reality Labs portfolio we are shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables given the momentum there,” last month’s statement read. “We aren’t planning any broader changes than that.”
With the layoffs reportedly taking place this week, we’ll bring you updates as we learn of Meta staff affected.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
Meta’s funding shift from Horizon Worlds and VR to smart glasses is happening just over a year after a leaked memo from Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told Reality Labs staff that 2025 will determine whether their projects are “the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure”.
In the memo, Bosworth described 2025 as “the most critical year in my 8 years at Reality Labs”, and told staff they “need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR”. Note that at the time, Meta was using MR to refer to VR too, a nomenclature that it ended earlier this year.
“And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance”, Bosworth followed that sentence with.
Since then, Reality Labs saw its highest-ever quarterly revenue in Q4 2024 with the launch of Quest 3S, which was the top-selling console on Amazon US for Christmas. But this momentum did not carry through into 2025 at all.
The first two quarters of 2025 saw Quest sales decline year-over-year, revealing that while Quest 3S was a popular stocking stuffer, it simply is not a successful year-round product. While Q3 saw a rebound, Meta explained that this was due to retailers stocking up on Quest 3S for this year’s holiday season.
Meanwhile, Meta has continued to push its Horizon Worlds “metaverse” platform with multi-million-dollar creator competitions, especially focused on smartphone-only worlds, as the company hopes to scale the platform from a social VR space to a cross-platform Roblox and Fortnite competitor. But this doesn’t seem to have gained much traction.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
This relative stagnation in Meta’s Quest and Horizon Worlds effort is contrasted with skyrocketing sales and significant public and investor interest in its smart glasses.
In multiple earnings calls last year, Meta’s partner EssilorLuxottica said that the Ray-Ban Meta glasses were performing “exceptionally well”, with sales having more than tripled compared to 2024. Both companies have claimed to be selling many models as fast as they can make them.
Meta has also claimed “unprecedented demand” for its higher-end Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, recently announcing a delay of its international expansion plans to catch up with US production.
Twisted Pixel and Sanzaru Games have been gutted according to laid off employees
The post Multiple Meta-Owned Game Studios Hit With Layoffs appeared first on Kotaku.
After a canceled revamp and a server shutdown, BioWare fans mourn the loot shooter’s potential
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