AltspaceVR Will Close Its Virtual Doors On August 3 (Updated)
Update, 7/28/17, 12:00pm PT: We spoke with Eric Romo, one of the founders of AltspaceVR about the future if the company.
One of the virtual reality industry’s early pioneers is preparing to close its doors because it couldn’t secure funding to keep the operation going. AltspaceVR announced that it would be shuttering the AltspaceVR social VR platform.
AltspaceVR got its start long before consumer-grade VR hardware made its way to the market. David Gudmundson, Eric Romo, and Gavan Wilhite founded AltspaceVR in 2013 after the Oculus DK1 dev kits started shipping. In 2015, the company launched an open beta of the AltspaceVR social VR platform, which allowed people with Oculus developer kits to interact with others in VR.
AltspaceVR had a healthy string of exciting technology and content announcements over the years. In September 2015, AlspaceVR released an SDK that would allow third parties to create content for the company’s platform, which led to the creation of licensed Dungeons & Dragons and Boss Monster games inside AltspaceVR. It also allowed Slack to integrate the social VR platform into its collaboration tool. In May 2016, AltspaceVR revealed FrontRow technology, which allows the company to host live events with limitless capacity. Later, AltspaceVR introduced VR Capture, which enabled the company to replay recorded AltspaceVR events at later dates so more people could enjoy the unique content found on the platform.
Following the launch of FrontRow and VR Capture, AltspaceVR started hosting frequent events with celebrity personalities. The company hosted virtual concerts for comedic musician Reggie Watts, a stand-up comedy act from Justin Roiland (of "Rick and Morty" fame, and most recently, Bill Nye held a VR event in AltspaceVR (catch the encore on July 31).
AltspaceVR made several software advancements, but it was also a fearless adopter of VR hardware. Over the years, AltspaceVR adapted its platform to work with the Leap Motion controller (it was the first company to adopt the Leap Motion Orion update), the Perception Neuron mo-cap suit, the HTC Vive and Oculus Touch motion controllers, and mobile VR headsets such as Google Daydream View and Samsung Gear VR.
AltspaceVR said that more than 35,000 people log in to the service every month, and the average user sticks around for at least 30 minutes. That’s a significant number of users for the early days of virtual reality, but it wasn’t enough to convince investors to spend more money on the company. AltspaceVR last secured funding in 2015, and it hasn’t yet produced a platform for monetization.
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AltspaceVR said it would close its social platform on August 3 at 7pm PDT. The company encouraged anyone who made friends on the platform to meet up with them this week to exchange an alternate means of keeping in touch.
Even though the social platform is going away, the note Tom’s Hardware received from the company suggests that the closure of the social platform may not be the end of AltspaceVR as a company.
“The amazing people that worked at this company created some awesome technology - things that we think will be foundational to the future of social VR. We’d love to see this technology, if not the company, live on in some way, and we’re working on that.”
Following the announcement of AltspaceVR's closure, we spoke with Eric Romo about any potential future for AltspaceVR. Romo confirmed that the AltspaceVR service would shut down but that AltspaceVR as a company would continue to operate beyond August 3, 2017. Altsapace's founders remain committed to doing all they can to recoup some of the money investors entrusted in them.
The future of AltspaceVR remains uncertain, and the company doesn't have a clear path forward yet. Romo said "it's all up in the air," but he believes the technology they created has a place in the VR market and he and his colleagues are trying to sort out what place that may be.
"I think it's fair to say that we feel and some other people agree that we've created some stuff that's usefull and valuable, and we want to see if there's any way to continue having that used in some way," said Romo. "Our mission from the outset was to create the framework for what we thought social VR could be and would allow it to grow and expand into other use cases. I think that's what we accomplished, and so we really want to see that live on in some way."
Romo confirmed that most of AltspaceVR's employees would be laid off at the end of next week. He declined to comment about who would remain, but we surmise that only a core group of staff would be with the company beyond August 3.
Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years.
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bit_user In anticipation of the numerous comments decrying VR to be a flop, I just want to remind folks that lots of innovators have gone belly-up, while the imitators who rode their coat tails often achieved stellar success.Reply
Just a few examples: Fairchild Semiconductor gave way to Intel and others, Atari created console gaming before Nintendo and Sega, Altavista created web search before Yahoo and Google, and MySpace did social networking before Facebook. I'm sure you can think of others.
Succeeding in VR is going to mean playing the long game. I think we all know it's not going to happen overnight, but it's not disappearing either. Perhaps AR actually needs to go mainstream first, since it has more practical applications.
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virtualban Tech is not enough when there is no community, yet.Reply
SecondLife focused on community and let the tech come, when it comes. And they are still going steady. -
dark_lord69 To really launch Social Media in VR you might need a company with a larger list of users...Reply
Facebook VR?
Although I think part of launching a social media VR platform would be the ability for friends and family to see YOU, not your avatar. (Even if it's only the face to start with.)
Until then you'll be talking with the dinosaur avatar of your brother and if you're just talking then you've narrowed it down to just a phone call and an avatar to look at while you chat. (Not very cool.) It needs to feel like more than just a phone call. But the hard part would be to get everyone's face into VR... but if any company could do it, leave it up to Facebook. -
Jeff Fx AltSpace was a great concept, and they put more work into VR than just about anyone, but did they have a business model? Where was the revenue to come from?Reply -
kcarbotte Reply19993107 said:AltSpace was a great concept, and they put more work into VR than just about anyone, but did they have a business model? Where was the revenue to come from?
I think you hit the nail on the head there. Every time that I spoke with the people at AltspaceVR, they had great ideas for technology, but they always danced around the concept to charging for a product.
I always assumed they would turn AltspaceVR into a digital concert venue and charge artists and performers to run shows that they could then sell tickets for. That never happened.
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kcarbotte Reply19993107 said:AltSpace was a great concept, and they put more work into VR than just about anyone, but did they have a business model? Where was the revenue to come from?
I think you hit the nail on the head there. Every time that I spoke with the people at AltspaceVR, they had great ideas for technology, but they always danced around the concept to charging for a product.
I always assumed they would turn AltspaceVR into a digital concert venue and charge artists and performers to run shows that they could then sell tickets for. That never happened.
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Fred Madrid Castellano I visited AltspaceVR and there was impossible to build anything, was boring. Twinity is a lot better even if it is "old" tecnology.Reply -
cryoburner Reply19993107 said:AltSpace was a great concept, and they put more work into VR than just about anyone, but did they have a business model? Where was the revenue to come from?
Making it advertising supported would be a logical business model. There's a lot of ways that could be done in a virtual space. Everything from simple billboards, to branded objects and themed locales.
They may have just been hoping that some big corporation would acquire them for a large sum of money though. -
blackbit75 Reply
Yes it's a flop. But nothing more far away than I would like to say. I would LOVE that virtual reality became in a success.19992145 said:In anticipation of the numerous comments decrying VR to be a flop, I just want to remind folks that lots of innovators have gone belly-up, while the imitators who rode their coat tails often achieved stellar success.
Just a few examples: Fairchild Semiconductor gave way to Intel and others, Atari created console gaming before Nintendo and Sega, Altavista created web search before Yahoo and Google, and MySpace did social networking before Facebook. I'm sure you can think of others.
Succeeding in VR is going to mean playing the long game. I think we all know it's not going to happen overnight, but it's not disappearing either. Perhaps AR actually needs to go mainstream first, since it has more practical applications.
3D TVs, Nintendo 3DS, and now VR is getting ill.
There aren't AAA games, apps that make anyone want to buy VR. May be, Resident Evil 7 with PSVR.
I would like to be wrong.