Category Archives: Games

Pistol Whip Developer Cloudhead Lays Off 70 Percent Of Staff

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The Canada-based development studio that describes itself as “VR’s Creative Heart” laid off 70 percent of its staff.

CEO Denny Unger of Cloudhead Games released a statement announcing deep cuts at the studio behind Pistol Whip and The Gallery.

“Due to industry forces beyond our control, Cloudhead must make the difficult choice to reduce our workforce effective January 7th 2026. 30% of us will remain to continue the mission,” a note from Unger reads. “Our belief remains in the power of VR as a medium, as a shared dream machine that will one day transform humanity. We have no doubt VR’s mainstream relevance is predestined, with future devices that do “everything”, but it will take studios like ours to be there when that time comes.”

Unger promised further updates about the “challenges and potential opportunities of our industry” while posting a document titled “reverse recruitment” with contact details for more than 30 staffers departing Cloudhead in the layoffs. Most are based in Canada and list a preference for a remote job.

16 people remain at Cloudhead following the cuts, according to Unger.

Cloudhead released Pistol Whip in 2019 to wide acclaim. I rated it “fantastic” at launch and, in the years after, the studio stacked on considerable updates including multiple campaigns and even a “growing library of explosive Scenes created by the Pistol Whip modding community directly in-game.” At $29.99 today on Steam, Quest, and PlayStation VR2, the title remains a fantastic cinematic action experience delivered in one big package rather than metered out as paid DLCs.

Pistol Whip is also a member of Meta’s Horizon+ subscription games program and the title is offered at a discount with new membership in Sony’s program. A large number of other top tier VR developers have their games in those games programs, which have helped supplement income from sales in the past.

We’ll be curious to hear more from Unger about his particular path at Cloudhead. In 2019, the studio was buoyed by the development of Aperture Hand Lab for Valve as a sampler experience for the Valve Index. With Steam Frame around the corner, Cloudhead will have a new surface for Pistol Whip sales in 2026, but the layoffs would suggest no partnership materialized for a project specific to the system.

The layoffs are unlikely to be the last major reduction in the VR space for an experienced development studio – Myst creator Cyan let half go last year among many others – as creative groups continue to be shocked by shifting platform priorities.

Please reach out to ian@uploadvr.com if you have anything to share regarding funding and recruitment in the VR and AR space.

Apple Immersive Lakers Schedule Reserves Live NBA Games For Local Viewers

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Apple revealed six upcoming Lakers games broadcasting live in Apple Immersive format to local Vision Pro owners.

The live schedule broadcasts from several angles at the Crypto.com Arena with one game from Ball Arena. Some angles are closer than a courtside seat with wide field of view stereoscopic views including “the scorer’s table, the area beneath each basket, a high-and-wide view of the arena, the player tunnel, the broadcast booth, and a roaming courtside perspective for interviews and commentary.” We’ll be curious to see how Lakers fans feel watching these games live as they air simultaneously on TV for most others.

Here’s the schedule:

  • Friday, January 9 – Milwaukee Bucks vs. Los Angeles Lakers – 7:30 p.m. PT
  • Thursday, February 5 – Philadelphia 76ers vs. Los Angeles Lakers – 7 p.m. PT
  • Friday, February 20 – Los Angeles Clippers vs. Los Angeles Lakers – 7 p.m. PT
  • Thursday, March 5 – Los Angeles Lakers at Denver Nuggets – 7 p.m. PT
  • Tuesday, March 10 – Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Los Angeles Lakers – 8 p.m. PT
  • Monday, March 30 – Washington Wizards vs. Los Angeles Lakers – 7 p.m. PT

NextVR’s full broadcasting schedule from 2016 is here on UploadVR for you to compare, with our report at the time noting that a free trial was offered ahead of the full broadcast schedule locked to NBA League Pass.

Here Is The NBA’s Full NextVR Live Broadcasting Schedule For This Season
NextVR has previously pulled in massive funding through big investment rounds, including $30 million and another 80 million, to continue live broadcasting in VR. Earlier this month we reported the startup took a major step forward, going into a full time stream schedule with the NBA. Now we have the
UploadVRCharles Singletary

Apple later acquired the “leading broadcaster of VR events” and the technology has been reborn as Apple Immersive, with the company investing heavily in broadcast rights and equipping sports venues with immersive camera systems that can offer better than a front row seat. In the case of “Spectrum Front Row” in 2026, Apple, the NBA, and Charter Communications require some authentication to view a live broadcast in headset.

“In Southern California, Hawaii, and parts of Nevada, Spectrum Internet customers and video subscribers of any provider with a package that includes Spectrum SportsNet can access live games, full-game replays, and highlights by downloading the new Spectrum SportsNet app for Apple Vision Pro and authenticating their active subscription. Users with a free NBA ID will also have access to live games, full-game replays, and highlights via the NBA app.”

After-game replays should be available in markets where Apple Vision Pro is sold as early as 24 hours after each live game, with the first available on Sunday, January 11.

Asymmetric PC vs. VR Game ‘Panoptic’ is Getting a Sequel with 1v4 Multiplayer and Quest Support

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Panoptic (2020) is an innovative ‘PC vs. VR’ game that plays out like a game of 1v1 hide-and-seek, with one VR player seeking out a flatscreen PC player who tries to blend into the crowd. Now the studio behind the game has announced Panoptic II and says it plans to expand the game with up to 1v4 multiplayer and make the game more widely accessible with support for Quest 3 and mobile devices.

The News

Developer Team Panoptes announced Panoptic II late last month in a livestream where the studio elaborated on plans for the game.

The studio confirmed that Panoptic II will continue to be designed around a singular VR player who acts as the ‘seeker’. But the studio plans to make the game accessible for larger groups and on more platforms than the original.

Instead of a single non-VR as the ‘hider’, Panoptic II is said to support up to four non-VR players who can work together to outwit the seeker. And this time around the non-VR players will join the game from mobile devices (presumably iOS and Android), making the game more accessible than the original game which required the non-VR player to play on the same PC being used by the VR player.

That new approach to non-VR players also stands to make Panoptic II more accessible to VR users; the studio says it has plans to bring the game to PC and, for the first time, Quest 3 as well.

Team Panoptes tells Road to VR that the gameplay loop will be expanded from the first game, and include brand new maps.

The studio is aiming to fund development of Panoptic II with crowdfunding support via a Patreon campaign, and says it plans to release early versions of the game closed testing, with a first build expected in Q1.

My Take

Panoptic’s asymmetric PC vs. VR gameplay is undoubtedly niche, but incredibly fun. During the Covid pandemic, friends and I spent many hours playing the game remotely using Discord and Steam’s ‘Remote Play Together’ feature.

Thanks to VR, the seeker’s embodied presence and giant scale feel exceptionally imposing to the tiny non-VR player, creating tense moments where a single slip-up could lead to a suspenseful cat-and-mouse chase. The seeker may be powerful, but with roaming NPCs that look identical to real non-VR player, there’s many opportunities to blend in and outwit the seeker.

For as unique and enjoyable as the gameplay was, the technical structure of Panoptic (a multiplayer game where both the VR and non-VR player are expected to play from the same PC) made it minimally accessible.

Panoptic II’s approach should make the game considerably more accessible. Not only because it will add support for Quest 3, but also because non-VR players will be able to join from their phones. With any luck, the phone version of the game will be ‘free’, which would turn the Quest 3 version of Panoptic II into a portable party game.

Back when I was playing with my friends over Discord, it was easy for the non-VR players to take turns being the ‘hider’. But as the only one with local access to the VR headset, I was the only one who got to play the role of the seeker. With the purported changes to Panoptic II, I’m already looking forward to being able to take my Quest anywhere and pass it around to friends so they can finally experience the other side of the game.

The post Asymmetric PC vs. VR Game ‘Panoptic’ is Getting a Sequel with 1v4 Multiplayer and Quest Support appeared first on Road to VR.

Darshan Shankar Reflects On 10 Years Of Bigscreen Beta As Beyond 2 Production Ramps

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Bigscreen founder Darshan Shankar believes Beyond headsets could be among the top five systems in use on Steam in the next few years.

On that path, Shankar hopes to fully catch up to demand for Beyond 2 headsets in February so they “ship within 1-2 business days, including custom-fit and universal-fit orders.” In April, Bigscreen marks 10 years of shared co-watching in VR on Steam with Shankar suggesting over email “perhaps we’ll keep the ‘beta’ tag forever.”

Shankar said Valve’s announcement of Steam Frame coincided with “one of our biggest sales days” as “the Beyond 2 has become the obvious upgrade path for those who want ultra-lightweight high-resolution micro-OLED and still use their preferred SteamVR tracking/controller setup.”

With Valve preparing to launch the Frame headset, I asked Shankar whether Bigscreen would support flat screen co-watching to devices like Steam Deck. Shankar responded:

“This has regularly come up in the past decade. We’ve stayed focused on VR, and I think that’s our strength. Many others (especially Valve) will do a good job of cross-play across PC and VR. We’re focused on the areas in which we think we have an exceptional edge in capability and knowledge. We have nothing to announce yet on our software development, need more time to develop 🙂 but we haven’t been sitting idle, that’s for sure.

Bigscreen just launched Dynamic Foveated Rendering for the Beyond 2e headset with early access in iRacing and DCS World among the first to explore support for the feature, which promises “eye tracking-driven performance improvements.” I purchased a Beyond 2 without eye tracking and received it near the end of 2025 to keep my base stations in service another couple years. We’ll be curious to hear reports from 2e customers when it comes to their real world performance using the feature.

“Many customers – hundreds of thousands around the world – are actively using SteamVR Base Stations and Controllers right now with their Valve Index, HTC Vive, etc., and the Beyond 2 has become the obvious upgrade path for those who want ultra-lightweight high-resolution micro-OLED and still use their preferred SteamVR tracking/controller setup,” Shankar wrote. “We are firmly committed to manufacturing the Beyond 2 with SteamVR Lighthouse tracking for the next 2 years. We can say this with certainty as we’ve inventoried components and have setup a continuously running production line. We’ve signed commitments to enterprise customers as they are reliant on our hardware for their businesses.”

Beyond 2 was announced in March 2025, shipping started in July 2025 with a universal fit cushion shipping near the end of the year.

“December is our biggest month of shipping, shipping more units in a single month than we typically did in an entire year with Beyond 1 in 2023 or 2024,” Shankar wrote. “We faced a lot more demand than we expected, with Beyond 2 already selling approximately 3 times more than Beyond 1 did.”

“We thought we would have inventory on hand for fast-shipping by August/September, but demand has just been too high. Each time we ramp up supply/production, demand was going up even further.”

The Steam Hardware Survey suggests that, as of this writing, Beyond headsets still need to climb past PlayStation VR2, Meta Quest Pro and both Windows Mixed Reality and the Oculus Rifts to make it into the top five.

“Perhaps within 1-2 years, we’ll be Top 5 alongside Steam Frame, Quest 3, etc,” Shankar wrote. “Beyond 2e’s built-in eyetracking cameras is the first computer vision-driven product we’ve shipped. It should be no surprise that we’ll eventually have more cameras inside Bigscreen Beyond, but there is no timeline for that. Camera R&D started years ago, and it’ll still take years before we release anything. The bar is very high for any camera-based feature.”

“I think the size of the existing SteamVR ecosystem is underestimated, and with Steam Frame dropping Lighthouse support, we’re actually seeing growing sales.”

Shankar said 2026 will see Bigscreen focus on expanding the company’s international presence.

“We currently sell in the US, Japan, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand (>50% of sales are international). To improve the speed of European fulfillment and support, we’re planning to open a facility in The Netherlands in early 2026,” Shankar wrote. “It currently takes 3-10 days to ship products into the EU from our Los Angeles factory, and we aim to improve this to 1-2 days with our local European center,” Shankar wrote. “We’ve achieved meaningful scale as a company (expecting to cross $100 million in annual revenue in the next year). We’ve stayed true to our values, built by passionate VR enthusiasts for VR enthusiasts, and we’re here for the long run.”

The Cyberdeck: How Personal Computing Enters VR

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William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer describes jacking into “the consensual hallucination” of “the matrix” with a “custom cyberspace deck” projecting one’s “disembodied consciousness” there. The hardware necessary to spend time in VR is a “cyberspace deck” seen “banging against” the hip of the main character.

In 2026, the “Realworld cyberdecks” page on Reddit says “The era of virtual reality is coming, so it is also time for cyberdecks to come” as hundreds contribute new rigs weekly.

If the “era of virtual reality” is coming and a “cyberspace deck” is how we get there, what do the first “realworld” decks look like? What are their functions?

Unlocking Digital Data In VR By Locking It To The Real World

What is a cyberdeck?

My custom deck begins at a couple terabytes of local storage of videos, photos, music, games, and other personal files. I’ve been able to access this data store in VR since about 2016 with Virtual Desktop. I don’t buy much software from Microsoft, though, so my data has been an ill fit inside Windows. Looking ahead, I’d love to build on my data with a Framework laptop to drive VR directly with Linux. In the meantime, I’m using macOS, iOS, Windows 11, SteamOS, and various flavors of Android to operate my file systems.

Many of us already carry, at the very least, 50 gigabytes of storage in our phones everywhere we go. Is it so difficult for us to imagine a couple years more and almost everyone finding use for terabytes carried with us?

After roughly a decade of headsets from Gear VR in 2014 to Quest 3 in 2023, when the Vision Pro arrived in 2024 I first experienced a standalone system unlock terabytes of digital information to use in VR. Apple brought apps from my iPad and iPhone, sure, but I also started perusing my own personal data store on local drives wirelessly through Mac Virtual Display. When I use the feature, my Mac’s screen turns off in the “realworld” and a resizable virtual panel opens in VR instead. If anybody else happens to be watching my screen my data isn’t displayed there anymore. For some scenarios that’s a bug, but for many it’s a feature.

Gibson’s fiction understood the value of cyberspace before “the matrix” could actually be. Now VR is a consumer reality and our model for personal storage of digital content collides with Gibson’s idea of a deck and the technical delivery of cyberspace. For example, you discover the confines of your digital keepers when you apply personal computing to your life without any specific platform limitations. The FAT god commands us to store no file greater than 4 gigabytes. And beware special characters in thy filenames.

In my view, a “custom deck” starts with pouring one’s personal data into any portable device. MicroSD cards are readable in Steam Decks and Steam Frames while thumb drives include their universal connector. So you can start building a deck starting from a $15 thumb drive or MicroSD card, and build up over time to a multi-thousand dollar laptop with the very latest graphics card to cyberspace.

Entry Level Decks

Hanging from a bag in the corner of my office is the latest personal computer from Raspberry Pi. Described as a “premium desktop computer” the Raspberry Pi 500+ is a keyboard selling for $200 with a 256-gigabyte solid-state drive built in running Linux.

Just send USB-C power into the Raspberry Pi and the keyboard starts computing. I used the included tools for the 500+ to unscrew the bottom of the keyboard and swap out its drive. The custom computer boots to the desktop quickly and now carries four terabytes of storage underneath satisfying mechanical keys.

Now I just need somewhere to display my files.

Conceptually, Raspberry Pi and I put together a custom deck of hardware and software that’s cheaper and more portable than anything made by Apple. The Pi doesn’t take me to cyberspace but it can display in cyberspace, and I can access it there as if from a floating terminal just like my Mac. And all of it is running in the space occupied by the keyboard traditionally used to operate a personal computer.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth emanate from the keyboard. In the back, ethernet, USB and micro HDMI ports connect physical accessories. The biggest problem is that the year is 2026 and we don’t have the easy-to-use software I need in virtual reality to access my deck’s files wirelessly. Instead, I hack my keyboard PC into VR by any means necessary. That means dealing with stuff like VNC and IP addresses or perhaps a latency-inducing capture card.

The Steam Deck offers access to Linux in a more user-friendly handheld console-like form factor compared with any Pi or Mac. If logging into Steam online before you can do fun things with your computer is too restrictive, then you can build your own deck of hardware and software and log in online only if you want.

A Framework For The Future

Readers who invest multiple thousands of dollars in their personal computing rigs know $200 or even $500 doesn’t truly buy a “premium desktop computer”. If a Raspberry Pi can only display a flat screen in VR, then a Framework laptop should be able to fully embrace the concept of cyberdeck carrying an NVIDIA RTX 5070 and 64 gigabytes of RAM.

My ideal configuration for a personal computer essentially matches the price of a top-of-the-line headset for a top-of-the-line deck that’s upgradeable for years. To me, it doesn’t really matter if my “deck” starts with my data on a thumb drive in a well-structured folder system, or if there’s a complex operating system and graphics card and central processor with a virtual assistant managing my data. The computer becomes “custom” and “personal” when I put my data inside.

The aim is to bring personal computing with me wherever I go. It’s not to the cafe or on a plane I really care about my deck of data and hardware going. Sure, those places would be great, but the most important place a deck goes is in VR.

Everyone Already Owns A Cyberdeck Lacking Direct VR Support

Bigscreen Beyond 2 needs a deck.

A cyberdeck is the missing key to Bigscreen Beyond.

As long as you’re seated there in your chair and have a good supply of clean power, conceptually speaking, Bigscreen Beyond and a Framework laptop should put you in cyberspace when the headset touches your face.

Yes you need lasers sweeping the room right now for Beyond and a network connection added to this core experience would bring a lot. Yes you could also add accounts, friends, entitlements, digital rights management and thousands upon thousands of other services and software packages as with any open computer.

Whether Beyond is running from a desktop PC or the Framework laptop is a secondary concern. All that fundamentally matters is that when you go to VR you have at your fingertips a storage device you can separate from your computer with all your personal and favorite files organized, indexed, searchable, accessible and playable.

As of this writing, data portability in the “cloud” typically means waiting hours or days to download a store of information from a provider. There’s a more immediate and extreme example of data portability, however, and we’ve had it for decades with removable storage systems.

If you have the freedom to immediately unplug both your content and yourself from the network and the headset, you also have the freedom to take your stuff with you anywhere and everywhere, in VR or otherwise.

From MP3 Players & Headphones To PCs & Assistants

Over the last quarter century, the MP3 player became the iPod and music libraries became the launchpad for iPhone – a new kind of hyper-connected deck filled with personal information. From iPhone and Android, our pocket decks consumed almost every product category of personal computing and remade a few others.

Something new is happening with spatial computing starting with experiences in virtual reality and extending into passthrough views and mixed reality. Any surface can become a touch-sensitive display. And our existing touch-sensitive displays become even more useful accepting touch input while turning off the flow of photons. They just send that data as bits over the network when needed. With reskinnable passthrough views, that “deck” in hand can become anything from a camera to a map to a tool to drag objects. Even non-interactive displays can become frames for new functionality. Watch a movie with closed captions while a friend seated on the same couch enjoys the same film in 3D without any text distractions.

That’s just for starters. Now imagine looking down at your phone in hand in VR and swiping along its surface, but in the real world the screen is off. Or imagine playing Breath of the Wild while standing in Hyrule and holding a Sheikah Slate.

Like the words “virtual reality” before we could go there anytime, the word “cyberdeck” right now still exists largely in the realm of fiction, except to the people posting to a creative subreddit. It is still mostly a concept. But as a concept, consider the possibility that VR is taking so long to become accepted by mainstream audiences because we lack our companion devices, data, and services as we walk around another universe. To interact with VR, we hold a pair of controllers standing in for hands instead of a cyberdeck displaying a map of where to go.

Bring on the pucks to access cyberspace with terabytes carried between headsets and glasses. In the meantime, Neuromancer is in production for Apple TV.