Beat Saber was the defining game on Quest when it came to the company’s first standalone at launch back in 2019, making the infectious block-slashing rhythm game a real system-seller. Now, Meta says it’s cutting Beat Saber’s online services for Quest 1 later this year.

The Meta-owned studio Beat Games revealed the news via a post on X, maintaining that all multiplayer functionality will be pulled come November 2nd, 2024:

In an FAQ detailing the move, the studio clarifies it will also stop releasing Beat Saber updates or customer support for the Quest 1 devices.

“If you want to access the PC version of Beat Saber on your Meta Quest 1, you can do so via the Meta Quest Link,” the studio concludes.

Granted, since Beat Saber and all purchased DLC is tied to your Meta account, it is transferable and playable across the company’s family of devices, including Quest 2/3/Pro and and Rift/Rift S—Meta cross-buy included.

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This shouldn’t come as any big surprise though, as Meta announced last year it was sunsetting Quest 1, noting that no new apps will be able to offer support for Quest 1 starting on April 30th, 2024.

This comes as the company seems to be winding down support for seemingly everything but Quest 3, as a few notable developers have decided against supporting the 2020-era Quest 2 or 2022-era Quest Pro, including Alien: Rogue Incursion and Batman: Arkham Shadow, both of which are slated to release later this year.

Meanwhile, Meta will soon be licensing Horizon OS (ex-Quest OS) to third-party OEMs ASUS, Lenovo and Xbox, which could be running the same chipset as Quest 3, and possibly the rumored Quest 3 Lite (alternatively known as ‘Quest 3S’) as well.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • ViRGiN

    Unnecessary change, but oh well.
    I wonder what’s the percentage of people who play multiplayer. It was added quite late to the game, and i never really saw it hyped.

    • kakek

      Also no new DLC.
      I know people that bought the Q1 for beat saber, and they’re pretty butt-hurt about that.
      That is not only a planned obsolescence move. But I would say a forced obsolescence.
      Say what you want about the need to exploit newer hardware and all, beat saber never pushed the envellope technically. There is NO reason Q1 owners that don’t feel like playing anything else than beat saber should be cut from new song.
      Now that I think about it, there was never any reason to block new games from being published on Q1 either.

      I have a Q2, but I still hate that cause that’s obviously how they will move forward with Q2 as well. It’s probably only a question of time before they simply remotely lock the headset altogether.

      And you wonder why people hate meta despite Quest being great headsets.

      • ViRGiN

        Xbox, Nintendo, Sony – they all closed down their stores for their older systems.
        Beat Saber remains playable on Q1. Just no multiplayer. And DLCs? Who would buy one for their 2019 headset that sold better than all pcvr, but still practically nothing compared to quest 2?

        Guess what, people can hate Meta all they want. Most of them will never vote with their wallets, cause all other “options” are infinitely more expensive and offers infinitely less.

        Who actually hates them? It’s gotta be the gaybens, cause there are over billion people using Meta services. Only gaybens were able to bully a company, because they had the “audacity” to ask to create a psn account for helldivers. Where were these gaybens when steam dropped windows 7?

        • kakek

          Stores are not the only way of getting games on those systems. Also that was after more than a decade. Like, 18 years for the xbox 360. And you can still play multiplayer or download your old games.

          Meta did that for the Q1 in 5 years.

          If you think Meta is popular, you are as deluded as PCVR players that think the PCVR market is alive. Meta has a horible image.
          No constructors ever actively made a device unusable, but I’m betting Meta will be the first.

          • ViRGiN

            > Meta did that for the Q1 in 5 years.
            Consumer VR was born in 2016.
            PC/consoles existed for multiple decades at this point.

            Oh yeah, the whole world is hating Meta. The whole world abandoned Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, the whole world is not leeching from open sourced AI models from Meta.

            If you think Meta is not popular, then you must be gayben.

            > Like, 18 years for the xbox 360. And you can still play multiplayer or download your old games.
            You can still play multiplayer in tons of games, and download your old games. When did Xbox 360 stopped accepting new submits to the store? There was no technical reason to do so, right?

            You can still install Sidequest on Q1, and install whatever you want.

      • guest

        forced obsolescence is one of the reasons they buy companies like beat, just so that they can herd their userbase to devices with cheaper displays!

  • another juan

    the real news is that beat saber is now cross-buy

    • ViRGiN

      I mean, kinda.. imagine playing THIS high end game on pcvr.

  • Derek Kent

    I own the Quest 1, the Quest 2, and I bought a Quest 3. I returned the Quest 3, and I barely use the Quest 2. The Quest 1 remains my preferred headset because of its OLED. Quest 2 and 3 look awful. Quest 3 has unusable binocular crossover. It’s such a shame to see Quest 1 disregarded when it’s superior in many ways.