Sleep Well, Rec Room

I first started playing Rec Room in 2019, exactly 17 days after I got my first VR headset (an Oculus Quest 1). It was a significant part of what convinced me to get into VR in the first place. The idea of a creation sandbox has always appealed to me, but it really drew me in when implemented in VR. The creation tools of Rec Room were what kept me coming back – the Maker Pen and associated tooling were absolutely stellar ways of implementing what could otherwise be very complicated behavior to understand.

I made a lot of rooms in Rec Room. I started a "clan" for a little while, called Leviathan Corporation (LC). I met almost all of my friends through Rec Room. Dozens of moments from this time period are going to stick with me for the rest of my life. The in-game convention Rec Con, meeting my friends during chance encounters, discovering core parts of my identity as a person, and more.

In 2021 I got frustrated with Rec Room's implementation of the glass material. I teamed up with one other player to create Compensation VR (CVR), which was my first real game development project. It also happened to be a massively-multiplayer online VR game with creation tools. Surprisingly, we were able to pull that off, with me being 14 and the other developer being similarly young.

CVR was what set off the vast majority of my life in the last few years. It was what made me pursue an Associate's of Applied Science in Computer Programming specializing in VR development. It was what gave me the skills that meant on my first day of college, the VR development teacher looked me dead in the eyes at 15 and said "I don't have anything to teach you." It was what gave me the skills to succeed in college, earn a scholarship, and transfer to university to work on my Bachelor's in Computer Science.

But this post isn't about CVR. It's about Rec Room. By the time CVR shut down in 2023, Rec Room had changed a lot. In 2021 they had been beginning to introduce a lot heavier use of monetization features – a subscription called "Rec Room Plus" (RR+), methods for creators to monetize their rooms and make real-world money, and more. It was both an exciting time and also disappointing to see features become locked behind paywalls. It was clear that the opinions of investors were beginning to override those of the people who truly cared about the game.

Rec Room really started to decline in 2024 or 2025 after the introduction of Rec Room Studio (RRS), a system interacting with the Unity editor which allowed players to create much more advanced rooms. You could import 3D models, animations, and other assets like any other Unity game, and they would be playable in-game. It was very similar to the VRChat SDK, in concept.

This opened the door to a lot of creativity. Unfortunately, it was locked behind RR+. It also opened the door to a lot of very low-quality rooms, even more than the existing tools. It led to massive infringement on intellectual property rights, blatant use of ripped assets from other games, and a whole host of other issues. These sorts of rooms completely diverged from the existing art style of Rec Room, which up until now had some of the best art direction I have ever seen in a VR game.

Rec Room also introduced custom clothing made through RRS, which only further increased the divergence from their art style. It began to become clear that they were struggling financially as they introduced feature after feature to try and increase monetization and improve profits, but apparently nothing they tried worked.

At the end of March 2026, Rec Room announced they would be shutting down for good on the 1st of June. I was immediately devastated by the news. Rec Room was the site of my formative years – I would spend 6+ hours a day there because it was the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and I had nothing better to do in the real world. It got me through some of the roughest times of my life as well as giving me some of the best. It introduced me to my best friends, it taught me social skills, and gave me a huge boost in what would end up being a very unexpected educational path.

I will admit, even just writing this makes me feel emotional about the whole ordeal again. I wish that there were a way Rec Room could recover financially and go back to how things used to be – the 3D UI system, less invasive monetization, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I also know that's plainly not feasible. I've moved over to the custom server Radium, which allows me to play a 2021 version of Rec Room like I always missed. Still, it doesn't feel the same. I'm going to miss the real Rec Room for a long, long, long time.

With all that said, despite the fact none of them will likely see this, I wanted to say a sincere thank you to the original staff of Rec Room. I'll always remember the voice of emilywafflesyay during the How To Rec Room YouTube series, or Gribbly's voice on the AMAs and update videos. I'm going to miss the CV2 status updates from Tyleo-Rec and I'm going to miss GotSeb's periodic antics.

All that being said, thank you for everything. I hope you can all go on to keep doing awesome things, and maybe we'll have something that could approach the level of community that Rec Room had.

Thanks for reading.

P.S: To everyone talking about making Rec Room alternatives themselves, I copied Rec Room before it was cool, lmao