Meta is closing the Ready at Dawn game studio, which it acquired more than a year ago to develop exclusive games for Meta Quest. This is due to the company's plans to cut the budget of Reality Labs by 20%, Engadget reports.
The company is preparing to launch the next Meta Quest 4 and Quest 4s VR headsets in 2026. We recently wrote that since 2020, the division has ceased to pay off and losses have been increasing every year.
Ready at Dawn has been known in the gaming industry since the days of Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP). The studio released its first game in 2006 - Daxter, a spin-off of the popular Jak and Daxter series for the PSP.
Ready at Dawn also released two games from the God of War series for PSP - Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta. In 2015, the studio made its debut on major consoles with The Order:1886 for PlayStation 4. The third-person action-adventure game became one of the most anticipated games of that year due to its graphics.
After mixed reviews, Ready at Dawn tried to release a multiplayer game Deformers for PS4, Xbox One, and PC in 2017. However, it was not successful either.
In 2018, the studio tried its hand at developing virtual reality games, releasing the quest game Echo Arena and the interactive sci-fi adventure game Lone Echo without gravity. Both games found their fans, which led to the release of the shooter Echo Combat in 2018 and Lone Echo II in 2021.
In 2023, Reality Labs acquired the studio and allowed it to continue operating out of its offices in California and Oregon. Since 2023, Meta has cut more than 20,000 jobs, a period that CEO Mark Zuckerberg called "the year of efficiency."