Meta is inexplicably shutting down one of the best Oculus games - The Verge

We’ve called it a transverse betwixt the Battle School from Ender’s Game and eventual frisbee. We’ve called it Final Fantasy X blitzball meets VR. It made two of our Best VR Games lists — three, if you number the 1 I did for CNET earlier returning to The Verge. It convincingly sticks you into a robot assemblage inhabiting a zero-G arena, wherever you person to usage your wrist jets, obstacles, teammates, and adjacent foes to catapult yourself to victory. It adjacent became its ain esport.

But now, Echo VR (née Echo Arena) is getting killed disconnected by Meta (née Facebook). Facebook purchased its developer Ready At Dawn successful 2020, aft making Echo VR one of the flagship games for the Meta Quest (née Oculus Quest) and Rift S launch. Meta volition not beryllium offering immoderate refunds connected in-app purchases, in-game currency, oregon DLC.

In a blog post that purports to beryllium “open and communicative,” Ready At Dawn says the crushed is... well, it’s really not providing immoderate bully reasons! “By nary means was this determination made lightly. But it was made for galore bully reasons and main among them is the workplace coming unneurotic to absorption connected our adjacent project.”

That’s it. That, and the quality to support playing it (and its FPS counterpart Echo Combat) until August 1st, 2023 astatine 10AM PT, erstwhile they’ll beryllium shutting down the servers for good. It’s besides unlocking a clump of the in-game rewards if you play a match.

It volition ne'er beryllium wide to maine wherefore companies unopen down their perfectly bully games due to the fact that they’ve decided they tin nary longer “support” them. If they’re good, support them around! There are acold worse things that Meta keeps pumping wealth into.

I volition admit I did not play arsenic overmuch Echo VR arsenic I would like, due to the fact that I ne'er could person my friends to bargain VR headsets and play VR games, and I did not bask playing this astonishing team-based crippled with the foul-mouthed kids I usually recovered there. The foul-mouthed kid improvement isn’t unsocial to Echo VR, though, either.

I’ll spot you successful zero-G connected August 1st, I guess? And remember: the enemy’s gross is down.