Rec Room Is Shutting Down This June After 10 Years of Service

Rec Room, the popular social gaming platform, is officially closing its doors on June 1, 2026, after a decade of operation.

The game launched back in 2016 as a virtual reality social experience where players could hang out, build their own rooms, and play mini-games together.

Over the years, it expanded beyond VR and found its way onto multiple platforms, including a non-VR mode and even a Nintendo Switch release.

Despite pulling in over 150 million players across its lifetime, the studio behind it, Rec Room Inc., was simply never able to turn those numbers into a sustainable business.

In a statement released on March 30, the team said: "Despite this popularity, we never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business."

"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."

The numbers behind Rec Room's legacy are genuinely impressive. Players made over half a billion friends on the platform, and the community collectively spent a cumulative 68,000 years inside the game. Millions of players were still logging in each month right up until this announcement. Yet none of that translated into financial stability for the Seattle-based studio.

It is worth noting that this closure did not come out of nowhere. Rec Room Inc. went through two rounds of layoffs in 2025 alone. The first, in March, cut around 16% of the workforce. Then in August, a far heavier round of cuts reduced the team by roughly half, bringing the headcount down to just over 100 employees. Even after all of that, the studio had suggested at the time that their runway could carry them into 2029. Clearly, things took a turn.

As per Geekwire, Snap, the company behind Snapchat, has already purchased some of Rec Room's assets. A number of employees from the studio are also expected to join the company.

What Players Can Expect Before June 1 Shutdown

For players still active on the platform, here is what the transition looks like.

As of the announcement date (March 30), new accounts can no longer be created, friend requests are disabled, and sign-ups for the Rec Room Plus subscription have been closed. Players who currently hold an active membership will have it extended through to June 1. On that final day, all logins will stop working, and the rec.net website will go dark at noon Pacific Time.

The studio is also trying to give the community a proper send-off. All first-party content across the in-game stores has been slashed by 80%, and several features that were previously locked behind the premium subscription are now free for everyone. Players can download their in-game photos and grab a "final report card" as a memento of their time in the game.

Creators have a slightly different situation. Unfortunately, fully functional room files cannot be downloaded, since the rooms depend on Rec Room's own servers to operate. However, room and invention data can be exported in formats that allow creators to potentially rebuild their work elsewhere, such as in the Unity game engine. This feature is only available through the Steam PC build of the game and is expected to go live roughly one week after the initial announcement.

The shutdown is a reminder of just how challenging the VR gaming space has become. Meta laid off around 10% of its Reality Labs staff earlier this year, and several VR-focused studios like Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR port), Sanzaru Games (Asgard's Wrath 1 & 2), and Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR, Defector) have already closed.

"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," the developers wrote.

"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."

If you have an account, now is a good time to log in and soak it all in one last time before June 1.