BigBox VR – Known for Population: One, Acquired 2021

Image courtesy BigBox VR

BigBox VR, developer of popular VR battle royale game Population: One (2020), was acquired by Meta in 2021. At the time, Meta said it was helping BigBox VR to “grow and accelerate their vision for POPULATION: ONE as a state-of-the-art VR social gaming experience, as well as pursue future projects.”

True to its word, Population: One has not only seen multiple expansions, including new maps, modes, and seasonal events, but it even went free-to-play in 2023, owing to the game’s popularity and extensive variety of purchasable in-game cosmetics. To this day, Population: One is still active and fresh, and remains cross-platform.

But the studio’s population of games remains just one. More than four years after the acquisition, the studio hasn’t announced any plans to work on new projects. While there isn’t a public roadmap for upcoming features to Population: One, the cadence of updates promises there is still more yet to come though.

Post-acquisition Grade: A-

Within – Known for Supernatural, Acquired 2021*

Image courtesy Within

Meta announced it was acquiring the studio Within in 2021 to build on its subscription-based VR fitness app Supernatural, with the goal of growing the VR fitness market and capitalize on the “new normal” of at-home fitness following the COVID-19 pandemic.

*The acquisition hit a pretty bumpy patch though when Meta encountered legal issues shortly thereafter, with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission taking Meta to court in 2022 to formally block the deal, citing the social media company’s supposed monopoly on the VR fitness space. Acquiring Within meant Meta would control both Beat Saber and Supernatural, two of VR’s most successful fitness and fitness-adjacent titles.

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In February 2023, the acquisition was eventually finalized and Supernatural continued on to offer regular content updates while remaining a major player in VR fitness. Within has largely delivered on its promise to enhance Supernatural.

The studio has added new workouts, novel ‘knee strikes’, and—most recently—multiplayer. It has also given Supernatural a mixed reality mode for Quest 3, unlike Beat Saber. But as with the other acquired studios we’ve talked about so far, there’s still no word on whether this talented studio will do anything but keep churning on Supernatural.

And it seems to be slowing down on those updates too. While the studio regularly updated the game with new content on monthly basis, its last update was in February 2025, leaving an unusually large gap in DLC. To boot, the studio hasn’t mentioned what’s next, if anything.

Post-acquisition Grade: C+ (show up to class more)

Camouflaj – Known for Iron Man VR & Batman: Arkham Shadow, Acquired 2022

Image courtesy Camouflaj, Meta

Meta acquired developer Camouflaj in 2022, which was known for the PSVR-exclusive Iron Man VR (2020). Touting the studio’s expertise in delivering high-quality immersive experiences, it was all but certain Camouflaj would bring the popular superhero game to Quest.

Since the acquisition, Camouflaj did just that, garnering the Iron Man VR port a respectable [4.4/5] user rating on the Horizon Store. With the port giving the studio a chance to get its bearing on the Quest platform, the studio set out to build a new flagship title for Quest 3, Batman: Arkham Shadow (2024).

Launched in October 2024, Batman: Arkham Shadow definitely delivered thanks to the studio’s superhero roots, having nabbed an even higher [4.6/5] user rating and a host of awards and accolades, including the Best VRAR Game of The Game Awards in 2024, and Road to VR’s 2024 Quest Game of the Year.

Camouflaj hasn’t tipped its hand at when the last update for Batman: Arkham Shadow will arrive, or what’s next on the roadmap, although it’s hard to not be impressed with such a spotless track record.

Post-acquisition Grade: A+

Twisted Pixel – Known for Wilson’s Heart, Acquired 2022

Meta acquired Twisted Pixel in 2022, a studio with significant VR experience: Wilson’s Heart (2017) and Defector (2019) on Rift, B-Team (2018) on Oculus Go, and Path of the Warrior (2019) on Quest. Unfortunately none of the titles were breakout hits as far as we know.

Though it wasn’t acquired until 2022, Twisted Pixel had a tight partnership with Meta even since the 2017 release of Wilson’s Heart, one the early titles for Oculus Touch. Considering the connection, the acquisition largely made sense, with Meta likely hoping to secure the studio’s ability to create narrative-heavy VR games moving forward.

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In 2023, Twisted Pixel let it slip that it was building something for VR in Unreal Engine, which has been an absolute mystery up until now. But in June 2025, the studio finally broke its years-long silence with the announcement it will be releasing Deadpool VR, with Neil Patrick Harris lending his voice to “the merc with a mouth.”

When we heard Twisted Pixel was taking the lead, and not sister studio Camouflaj, it was a bit of a shock. In our initial hands-on, we noted the vibe is definitely on point, although there’s still some work do be done nailing the right feel before it releases later in 2025.

Post-acquisition Grade: B- (room for improvement)

Armature Studio – Known for Resident Evil 4 VR, Acquired 2022

Image courtesy Capcom, Armature Studio

Armature Studio—which had worked on smaller VR games in years prior—was acquired in 2022 after the success of its Resident Evil 4 (2021) port to Quest 2. As a solid port and a well-known and well-loved IP, it became one of the highest-profile game releases of the Quest 2 era.

At the time of the acquisition, Meta didn’t mention specifically why it acquired Armature, but the studio’s long track record in successfully porting games to other platforms probably had something to do with it.

While Resident Evil 4 VR is basically the same game you could play on GameCube in 2005, Armature did an admirable job of overhauling the classic game for VR, which, despite some fairly dated gaming tropes, made it feel new again with the addition of high-res textures and a number of immersive, VR-native mechanics.

While impressive, Armature hasn’t released anything beyond Resident Evil 4 VR for Quest since, which was notably before the acquisition. Again, seemingly not utilizing the studio’s talent in a particularly efficient way.

Post-acquisition Grade: D+ (still hope, but the clock is ticking)

– – — – –

Only a fraction of Meta’s seven surviving studios continue to deliver content. And outside of Deadpool VR, we’re still waiting to see what’s actually next in terms of fresh games. When we graded these studios last year, we noted that Meta seemed to be slowing down, rather than speeding up its push for VR content—which sadly still seems to be the case.

With the launch of Quest 3S in October 2024, you’d expect Meta to pick up the pace in stocking the Horizon Store with even more premium content, although there may be at least one explanation why this isn’t the case.

Meta noted earlier this year that the release of Quest 3S has marked a notable shift in Quest’s userbase. On the whole, Quest users are now younger, and prefer free-to-play content, which could explain why Meta isn’t investing as heavily as before.
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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 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • XRC

    Sad but true…

  • Stephen Bard

    I still find it shocking and sad that Ready at Dawn had a large team working on "something" for several years after Lone Echo II, but shut down without releasing even a piece of what they had been working on.

    • Acurisur

      My educated guess would be that whatever Ready at Dawn was working on, still wasn't ready to be shown to the public, even after several years in development so Meta decided to cut costs. If it's not ready to be shown, then it's worthless to Meta and is just going to suck money out of the company.

      I think sometimes we need to take our consumer hat off and look at the overall picture, companies are not going to keep funding studios if there's no end product.

      • Herbert Werters

        It could be that Meta commissioned the studio to develop a game for the Quest and the studio was unable to realize their vision due to hardware limitations. This pushes the motivation of a studio to the bottomless pit. It could be that the studio resigned and Meta had to close down. That would also be an option. We don't know, but I can very well imagine it. Anyone who previously made games like Lone Echo I and II and then suddenly has to develop on a cell phone chip certainly doesn't enjoy their work any more.

        • Blaexe

          "Anyone who previously made games like Lone Echo I and II and then suddenly has to develop on a cell phone chip certainly doesn't enjoy their work any more."

          Seems like it worked out well enough for Sanzaru and Camouflaj.

          • Herbert Werters

            You also don't know what happened internally with Sanzaru and Camouflaj. Maybe some of them have changed employers.

          • Blaexe

            You were making a pretty definitive statement saying “Anyone who previously…”

            I’m just saying Sanzaru and Camouflaj are proof that’s not true. There’s no generalization needed.

          • ApocalypseShadow

            Only proof you're making is that those developers didn't make big AAA games and had SOME success on VR cellphone power.

            Also, Asgard's Wrath series was given away with headsets. Iron Man had success on PSVR and spilled over to Quest when Facebook bought the developer as gamers were wanting that game multiplatform. What are the sales of Iron Man on Quest to say they are successful?Batman also was and is given away with headsets. Being subsidized doesn't mean guaranteed success or success. Just means they are on welfare until Facebook decides to pull the plug on other developers they no longer deem necessary. They may deem Camouflage and Sanzaru unnecessary next and make what developers they keep to make AR glasses apps.

            He's right above. Some developers won't even make VR games or Nintendo Switch games because the current power limits their freedom to make games when current consoles and PC dwarf stand alone power. Doesn't mean good games can't be made. They just don't bother. If Quest was powerful enough, the games they currently made on PC VR would have been ported over already.

          • Blaexe

            Asgards Warth is on the same scope (or rather bigger) and quality as Lone Echo.

          • Herbert Werters

            Which Asgard's Wrath do you mean? Part 1 or part 2? In part two you can see that a lot of time and money went into optimization and severe restrictions. The game is also super stretched out with its different heroes and chapters. AW2 definitely doesn't have the quality of LE1 and 2.

          • Blaexe

            AW1. Your argument was that a team that was previously working on big, high graphics games can not successfully do a transition to Quest games. Sanzaru did exactly that – very successfully. And to a degree, Camouflaj did the same with Batman.

            It’s proof that your argument doesn’t work as a generalization.

          • Herbert Werters

            So I don't know where you see a generalization. I was just speculating in the case of Ready at Dawn and the reason for its closure by Meta. You're really sensitive.

            Just because they made their games, you don't know how many of the developers had to go through a valley of tears. I'm just saying that I can well imagine that it can be hard to suddenly have to develop for very weak hardware and can severely limit visions.

          • Herbert Werters

            Excuse me. But you can also be really petty. Everyone who reads this knows what I mean and what I want to say. It's also about the fact that such a change has consequences, no matter to what extent. Of course not EVERYONE is meant.

  • 50 Sades

    What do you expect from a founder who was a college dropout. Grades were never really his thing.

  • VRDeveloper

    Please, let's avoid talking about Echo VR. It's still recent in our hearts..

  • Octogod

    Great overview.

    Beat Saber will be released in MR for the new glasses, as will Supernatural. Anything more game focused will be consolidated into roughly an annual tentpole release, where they purchase a licensed property and market this to show they're trying.

    Note: Meta owns the platform and openly deletes reviews to boost their internal projects. There are even internal channels for developers to do the same. The player review score means zero.

    But everything indicates them slowly pulling out of this space. I genuinely wonder if there will be a Quest 4.

    • Acurisur

      This would be my guess as well as the reason why Meta shut down PSVR2 development. A MR mode would only work on Quest devices (possibly some of the newer PCVR headsets as well) so any future packs won't be compatible with PSVR2.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        TL;DR: PSVR2 passthrough is a lot better than Quest 2 passthrough, and as long as they still allow playing Beat Saber in a virtual environment, there is no technical reason to drop currently supported platforms.

        The problem with the MR argument is that it only makes sense if they not only add an MR mode, but make MR mandatory. Otherwise versions for PSVR/2 could still use the same code base, just not offer this extra mode. And it is very unlikely that a future Beat Saber will only be playable in MR, because a lot of people don't want to see their room while playing.

        Requiring MR would also not only be a problem with PSVR2 and pretty much all PCVR HMDs that aren't Quest 3/3S, but also for the huge Quest 2 install base. Meta could of course require at least a Quest 3S, but this would
        – significantly lower the number of sales, esp. DLC to existing Beat Saber players, which makes a lot more money than the base game itself,
        – piss off the Quest fitness users that are both a huge group with above average retention and more willing to spend money than the newer Gorilla Tag crowd, and
        – technically make no sense whatsoever, as the core game ran just fine even on a Quest 1, so older hardware wouldn't limit the VR experience like it would have with Batman: Arkham Shadow.

        And technically PSVR2 offers passthrough. Only in black and white, but using 1080p cameras, so the resolution is high enough to read your phone, way better than on Quest 2 using AFAIR 400p tracking cameras. I'm not sure if Sony allows passthrough in games though.

        But again, this is only an issue if a future Beat Saber version forces you to always play with passthrough, doing away with the virtual environments, and Meta only accepts MR with at least Quest 3 level quality. If any of these conditions is not strictly required, the reason for dropping PSVR2 support was not due to technical reasons.

  • Ad

    These all seem like they needed a thin sliver of developers who couldn't leave the industry like so many others have, keeping some content around on a fading platform.

  • Herbert Werters

    Meta simply has no patience at all and jumps from one thing to the next far too quickly, like a deer on its hind legs. It's not going to work out that way. Customers and developers don't want that.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      TL;DR: Meta is/was pretty patient and willing to invest for years. The majority of gamers still doesn't want VR at all, and most existing Quest users actually want casual or free-to-play games.

      In Meta's defense, they for years invested a lot into making Quest an attractive gaming platform. The problem is that only a tiny fraction of gamers ever got onboard. Meta paid many millions for a number of high profile titles like RE4, AW2 and Batman: Arkham Shadow, but none of them either drew in a lot of new users, or sold particularly well.

      RE4 dropped from the sales top 20 in less than a year, AW2 immediately after no longer being bundled. The best selling games have been casual titles like Beat Saber, Walkabout Mini Golf or Job Simulator. And Meta mostly selling USD 300 HMDs that are given as Christmas presents to teenagers has shifted the Quest user demographic, with the free-to-play Gorilla Tag social gaming crowd now dominating.

      I seriously doubt that Meta had planned/intended this. They are now reacting by pushing the free-to-play social Horizon Worlds onto everyone, simply because the initial plan of gathering a huge user base with subsidized hardware and paid-by-Meta high profile games has clearly failed. We may be at the 10M active users Zuckerberg declared the minimum for self-sustainability, but that was still based on people actually buying apps. This whole development will annoy VR enthusiasts that have been waiting for AAA VR since DK1, but it's only partly Meta's fault.

      For years the argument was that all VR needed to go mainstream was higher resolutions/better graphics/more (high profile) games. But both Quest hardware and game quality has made huge leaps forward, and Quest now has a 1000+ titles game library. Most gamers still don't care, most VR games sold are casual titles, and most Quest users don't pay for apps at all. Just throwing more money at the studios Meta acquired probably won't change that.

      • guest

        Its more than that. Big tech companies often call these takeovers "talent aquisitions", that is, a cheaper way of cherry-picking out multiple top developers from a batch, many that would not ordinarily go out of their way to work for a large corrupt company just for the money. Often they will let the team continue their existing projects so they can carefully butcher it up without killing the most productive employees (once they discover who they really are).

        • XRC

          Classic Aquihire technique

      • ApocalypseShadow

        I look at it another way… You can't expect gamers to buy the big games when you don't give them the storage to do so. Instead of packing in worthless, filler accessories, they should give you enough storage so that you can buy things. Only chance of having larger storage, is to buy the higher priced headset. No ability to store games on an external device that's copy protected for the games if they're worried about that. Hell, they could sell the HDD, SSD or memory card that could plug into the USB C connection.

        Many times I've considered buying games but decided it wasn't worth uninstalling 10-15 other, smaller games or 1 or 2 big games to install that ONE new game. Consoles now give you unlimited capacity to store games if you have the storage. Buy whatever SSD and buy whatever. Just plug in that external memory and BAM, good to go. It, install a larger capacity SSD. Same with PC. It's not just that gamers just weren't interested. Yes, they are buying the smaller games. Well, they have no choice in the matter. And free games just means you don't even need to really download and install any games.

        If you sell low memory, expect low sales for bigger games as a possible reason. Sure I want Batman or Arizona Sunshine 1 and 2, etc. But the memory game, with no option to buy more memory, and only given the ability to erase what you already bought and waste bandwidth redownloading is a no go. Facebook, not even considering this fact, makes me not want to buy more.

      • Herbert Werters

        Yes, all the points are right. But the quality of the games has unfortunately taken a real downward turn and Quest now has a game library with more than 1000 titles, many of which no longer match the quality of older PC VR games. There should have been games that had more to offer than what was available on the PC at the time. In my opinion, the introduction of the Quest was a blatant step backwards in terms of quality. I don't even want to talk about AAA because VR games are simply a long way away from that. AAA is not even needed. There is simply a lack of interesting games in my eyes. But I can only talk about myself and what I hear from flat gamers about why they find VR uninteresting. So what Meta is now is exactly the opposite of what core gamers find interesting. In my eyes, VR gaming as it is now has failed.

        • ApocalypseShadow

          It was a step forward in mobility and features. But yes. A step back in high quality. I still like it overall. But hate the battery life and the storage capability.

          PS VR 2 for example doesn't have storage constraints and you see games like RE8 and RE4 Remake looking amazing. Mods on PC for games like Skyrim or GTA 5 just blowing stand alone away. I agree.

          • Herbert Werters

            And that's exactly what core gamers want to see and are used to. This is exactly why VR, as it has evolved over the last 5 years, is not worth a look for core gamers. This is a huge problem that many people are simply ignoring. Instead of really tackling the problem, they just go other ways.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            TL;DR: The problem isn't the games, the problem is VR itself.

            You assume that quality is holding VR back, but that's still just the old argument: if only the hardware/games were better, gamers would adopt VR. And by now I very seriously doubt that this is true, as after a decade of consumer VR, there are basically zero data points indicating that this would in fact help.

            PSVR2 now has AAA hybrid titles like RE4/RE8 and GT7, and comes with very nifty optimizations that allow them to perform way better than the PS5 hardware alone would be capable of. PCVR has UEVR which opens up a ton of AAA games, at least on fast hardware. Compared to the state in 2022, both PC and Playstation VR got a very significant boost that should have attracted more "core gamers", but the VR user count needle barely twitched.

            You can of course endlessly prolong this argument: PSVR2 is too expensive, has too few AAA titles, UEVR has too high minimum requirements, and mods are not quite as good as native integration. Or PSVR2 would sell if only it had pancake lenses, PCVR would sell if only there were OLED HMDs. But twelve years after DK1, and nine years after the first consumer PCVR and PSVR HMDs, with many staggering improvements since then, this has become mostly a straw man argument.

            It looks a lot more like there are fundamental issues that keeps the core gamers away. Like "most people hate strapping plastic boxes to their face, and don't care enough about immersion to ever deal with this". And some won't even care once VR HMDs use 25g frames with direct laser retina projection, simply because they want to share the screen/experience with others in the same room. And more than half of all gaming revenue comes from casual titles played on very tiny screens with pretty much the most primitive form of input imaginable, in games that can't even spell immersion, but scream convenience.

            VR has nothing to offer to either these people or many "core gamers". VR enthusiasts just assume that all that's missing is the proper content or technology advancements, because they themselves value immersion so high that they cannot imagine someone else would voluntarily miss out on that, if only the circumstances were right.

            But we had billions of people first playing Minesweeper and Solitaire and nothing else, and now an endless flow of basically identical Match-3 games. At any time they could have opted for something better, prettier, funnier or more complex, but they didn't. And I'm pretty sure that XR will only see mass adaption with AR/smart glasses, which will of course also feature some games, and most of them will be free floating Match-3 games or something similar.

            VR is a niche not only because it is still cumbersome with lots of content and usability issues. It is also niche because the things it does best aren't the things most gamers care about all that much. And the most successful VR game ever is Gorilla Tag, which is pretty much the anti-thesis of the high quality VR experiences that are supposed to draw in core gamers. Beat Saber and Gorilla Tag are to VR what Minesweeper and Solitaire were to Windows 95 users: what most people really want/choose, even if there are way better options.

          • Herbert Werters

            I can understand your arguments and I actually see it the same way. However, it hasn't been tried yet with the better games. The tests that took place back then were with a much smaller player base than now. If you were to tackle this now, it could be completely different. Now we have affordable VR hardware and rendering power that wasn't available back then. It's just that nobody invests a little longer in a trial. Sony only brought a handful of games (flat ports) onto the market with the VR2. More of them would certainly have helped a lot. Exclusivity was an additional factor that made VR more interesting on other platforms. So the argument is not old. When I ask core gamers why they don't play VR or are not interested in it, I always hear that there is nothing interesting for them apart from a handful of titles, but they don't want to buy any hardware for it. The expenditure would be out of proportion. Of course, there's also the face computer that you have to wear, but I'm sure that's only of secondary importance if the content is convincing. For the games that are available, the subordinate aspect of inconvenience is put further to the front.

            UEVR is a mod that is not marketed at all among core flat gamers and is only something for VR gamers who are already familiar with the topic. Furthermore, core gamers are not necessarily known for modding and tinkering. These are more the enthusiasts who are very keen to experiment and dabble with something like the UEVR mod. UEVR modded games are not native VR games. If the UEVR mod is not discussed in the usual gaming media, how can core gamers even get in touch with it?

            But why should these be straw man arguments. I don't understand that. The examples you gave are all valid points. No one who names all of these points is distorting, exaggerating or simplifying, but rather listing individual points that can curb interest and curiosity.

            But that's not true about game revenue.

            Roughly researched:

            Casual gamers make up around 50-60% of the entire gaming community and account for around 20-30% of total gaming revenue.

            Core gamers are approx. 30-40% of the entire gaming community and account for approx. 40-50% of total gaming revenue.

            Hardcore gamers account for approx. 5-10% of the total player base and have a share of approx. 25-35% of total game revenue.

            Core and hardcore gamers are much more economically relevant per capita, although casual gamers make up the majority. This is why many major titles, subscription models (such as Xbox Game Pass) and marketing campaigns are aimed particularly at core gamers – they offer the best mix of reach and willingness to pay.

            As I said, there are no longer any games in VR that would appeal to core gamers. The latest reports on Quest sales figures show that revenue is stagnating.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      I feel that that is a somewhat criticism at the only company in the world that has spent billions over the last decade… Although it seems true that perhaps more could have been reached with 1/10 of the budget and a bit more vision. But the same criticism applies to Google.

      • Herbert Werters

        Yes, the criticism is not directed at one participant alone, but it is a general VR gaming criticism. That includes everyone. Meta, Sony, Valve and those who don’t participate at all like Apple, Nintendo, Microsoft etc.

  • kakek

    I really wonder what ready at dawn had been doing for the last 3 years.
    I mean, they released 2 very high quality titles. So there was clearly skills there.
    And then, 3 years went … so they had the time get another title really well advanced.
    And suddenly they are closed without any idea on what they had been doing for 3 years.
    Was the product they were making not up to meta standards ?
    Did they burn themselve on lone echo 1 and 2, and their next project was simply heading nowhere ?
    Did their skill not translate on Quest titles, and as good as they were for PCVR they couldn't produce a good Quest titles ?

  • Anonymous

    While I don't claim all the clousures or layoffs were necessarily Meta's fault alone, but damn, also looking at Microsoft and Sony (plus EA) recently I am starting to think that getting bought by a bigger company for a small game studio seems more like a death sentence than blessing.
    Especially if the parent's main business isn't a gaming company or the CEO has no empathy nor even sympathy towards the art of good game making.