Meta Is Killing Two Oculus Quest Games Without Explanation (theverge.com) 26
Meta is ending support for two first party original Oculus Quest launch titles next year without explanation. UploadVR reports: The company sent out emails to all owners of Bogo and Dead And Buried II on Friday to inform them that these apps will "end services" and "no longer be supported" after 15 March 2024, five years after they launched. The Meta Quest platform policies require developers to give customers at least 180 days notice before shutting down an app, so this appears to be Meta complying with its own policy.
Bogo was a free virtual pet app designed as a demo of Oculus Quest's wireless room scale tracking and hand controllers. It's one of the few VR apps that adapts to the size of your playspace, keeping the interactable area reachable for small rooms while encouraging physical walking for those with larger rooms. Bernie Yee, a former Meta manager who hired and led the 'Oculus REX' team that developed Bogo (as well as Dreamdeck, Toybox, First Contact, and First Steps), lamented the death of Bogo on X, tagging Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth to ask that it be preserved on App Lab. Yee was let go in the first wave of layoffs in November last year, alongside multiple of the REX team. [...] While Meta hasn't commented on the decision, the use of now-obsolete SDKs and the lack of a team to update the app likely contributed to the decision to kill it, but it's not clear why it couldn't have been demoted to App Lab.
Dead and Buried II on the other hand was a $20 multiplayer shooter - one of the first FPS games available on the Oculus Quest. It launched with two game modes, a team vs team 'Shootout' and a free-for-all 'Deathmatch'. An update just under a year later added three new modes: a 1vs1 'Quickdraw' mode and two co-op modes, Survival and Horde. Given Dead and Buried II is a multiplayer title, Meta may be sunsetting so it no longer has to maintain the servers and related online services, as it also did with the much more popular Echo Arena back in August.
Bogo was a free virtual pet app designed as a demo of Oculus Quest's wireless room scale tracking and hand controllers. It's one of the few VR apps that adapts to the size of your playspace, keeping the interactable area reachable for small rooms while encouraging physical walking for those with larger rooms. Bernie Yee, a former Meta manager who hired and led the 'Oculus REX' team that developed Bogo (as well as Dreamdeck, Toybox, First Contact, and First Steps), lamented the death of Bogo on X, tagging Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth to ask that it be preserved on App Lab. Yee was let go in the first wave of layoffs in November last year, alongside multiple of the REX team. [...] While Meta hasn't commented on the decision, the use of now-obsolete SDKs and the lack of a team to update the app likely contributed to the decision to kill it, but it's not clear why it couldn't have been demoted to App Lab.
Dead and Buried II on the other hand was a $20 multiplayer shooter - one of the first FPS games available on the Oculus Quest. It launched with two game modes, a team vs team 'Shootout' and a free-for-all 'Deathmatch'. An update just under a year later added three new modes: a 1vs1 'Quickdraw' mode and two co-op modes, Survival and Horde. Given Dead and Buried II is a multiplayer title, Meta may be sunsetting so it no longer has to maintain the servers and related online services, as it also did with the much more popular Echo Arena back in August.
Dead and Buried (Score:3)
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It looks like people have gotten the email over Dead and Buried 2 as well. https://www.reddit.com/r/Oculu... [reddit.com]
Good game companies cancel projects all the time (Score:2)
Re:Good game companies cancel projects all the tim (Score:4, Interesting)
Can they really afford to throw any titles away at this point? Just make them into something decent based on what they are, price them accordingly, slap them on the ass and send them out the door.
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Can they really afford to throw any titles away at this point?
The money they spent is a sunk cost, they can't get anything back beyond the salvage value of the current game. Which given cancelation suggests little to no salvage value. As I mentioned earlier, if there is a hint of potential then reworking is another option. However this often means restarting nearly from scratch.
Just make them into something decent based on what they are, price them accordingly, slap them on the ass and send them out the door.
Because something decent is probably not really a realistic option. The design and/or code are likely flawed in some serious manner.
Keep in mind this is Oculus. There is not some deep pool o
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Can they really afford to throw any titles away at this point?
That's something that only they can answer as only they have the detailed player information.
slap them on the ass and send them out the door.
And maintain servers to run them. Admittedly it should be easy for Meta who have data centres everywhere, but there is a non-zero cost associated with a multiplayer game.
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Care to name any?
Note, before you answer, that you used the qualifier "good". And I can't think of a good game company that isn't offering the chance to run your own servers if they shut down their official ones.
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Care to name any?
STARCRAFT: GHOST is one that I regret did not make it.
"A brief history of Blizzard's canceled and unreleased games" [2014]
https://www.polygon.com/2014/9... [polygon.com]
Note, before you answer, that you used the qualifier "good". And I can't think of a good game company that isn't offering the chance to run your own servers if they shut down their official ones.
I'm referring to games canceled during development, there never were public servers.
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Games canceled during development don't exactly hurt any customers (except maybe their expectations and hopes).
Re: Good game companies cancel projects all the ti (Score:2)
You Thought You Bought It (Score:5, Insightful)
You just got rented.
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Well it's obvious (Score:3)
Bogo was a free virtual pet app
Apple is doing well with its anti kiddie porn virtue signaling efforts, so Meta is doing the same: they fight grooming.
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And they choose the one platform that requires you to cough up more money for an add-on to a computer than a whole gaming console costs? Take a wild guess what the average sub-14 year old will rather have.
If they actually wanted to fight grooming, there's plenty of chance to do that on their main platform.
Welcome to⦠(Score:2)
â¦the cloud
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One of my favorite things about my collection of PS2 games is that no game publisher will ever be able to say about any of them (with the exception of Final Fantasy XI), "We're not supporting it now. Sorry, you can't play it any more."
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And hey, even 20 years later, FFXI is *still* supported and playable...but only on PC, which is fine. There was no way to keep it running on PS2/Xbox360 platforms, but gotta give credit where it is due, they've kept it running on PC because they could.
Explanation? (Score:2)
I understand Mark Zuckerberg's mind well enough that I coded an AI version of it that on an RTX 4070 runs twice as fast as his native brain. .. Anyway .. I asked the AI why he cancelled it, and it said the game wasn't making enough money to cover the cost of resources to maintain it.
Is that really a good idea? (Score:2)
They'd blowing dough on polishing that turd like there's no tomorrow, and then they axe two things that actually might sell it? Maintaining those games can't be more expensive than the embarrassing attempts at publicity stunts that has already surrounded this trainwreck of a gaming accessory.
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and then they axe two things that actually might sell it? Maintaining those games can't be more expensive
You're making assumptions. Unless you work for Meta assumptions are all those are.
publicity stunts that has already surrounded this trainwreck of a gaming accessory.
The gaming accessory isn't a trainwreck, it's actually done rather well for Meta, so well that they've released multiple iterations and did so long before they were spending money in a newsworthy way. If you're talking about the money they are setting on fire for nothing, that's actually being pushed as a business accessory and "trainwreck" isn't a word that does that stupidity justice. VR gaming is about the only thing Meta h
*yawn* (Score:2)
Who cares? The Oculus and all of its games are complete trash.