Ready at Dawn, an in-house development studio run by Meta, is shutting down as the Reality Labs division faces significant budget cuts. According to an internal memo from Oculus Studios vice president Gio Hunt, the company plans to cut the division’s budget by 20% over the next two years.
Ready at Dawn’s track record in the gaming industry dates back to the days of Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP). The studio released its first game in 2006 with Daxter, a spin-off of the popular Jak and Daxter series for the PSP. Ready at Dawn also released three games in Sony’s God of War series for the PSP, including Chains of Olympus, Ghost of Sparta, and the Olympus Collection, which combined two of its earlier games. The studio moved to consoles, starting with the PlayStation 4 in 2015 with The Order: 1886. The Victorian-era third-person action-adventure was one of the most anticipated games of the year due to its visuals.
The rise in popularity and ease of access to virtual reality prompted the studio to revisit the new medium of immersive gaming in 2018. The studio released the first two VR titles in its Echo series of games, including the free-to-play virtual sports Oculus Rift and Quest Echo Arena and the interactive sci-fi adventure Lone Echo. Both games found fans on the versatile VR headset.
Meta acquired Ready at Dawn in 2020 to make it a developer of exclusive games for its VR headsets. The following year, Lone Echo II hit stores — the studio’s final release.
