The studio produced some early hits for the PSVR and Oculus Quest.
Polyarc, the developer behind digital actuality video games Moss and Moss: Ebook II, has closed, in keeping with a brand new publish on the studio’s LinkedIn web page. Primarily based on a reverse recruiting sheet shared alongside the announcement, not less than 29 members of the studio’s employees at the moment are on the lookout for work.
“After practically 12 years driving the joyous rollercoaster of feelings that’s making video video games, our time collectively has come to an finish,” Polyarc says. “As we wind down energetic growth, we’re saying our farewells to one another. Working collectively over all of those years has been an honor. Bringing shock and delight to those that performed our video games has been a privilege. Thanks to everybody at Polyarc, our work is now completed.”
The Seattle-based studio’s Moss collection was an early VR favourite, thanks partly to the way in which it fused conventional action-adventure gameplay with a digital camera system that allow you to peer round diorama-like ranges whereas controlling Quill, the collection’ mouse protagonist. Polyarc’s output additionally turned a dependable catalog filler for varied VR platforms — Moss launched on the PlayStation VR, and was additionally ported to the Oculus Quest as a launch title. Moss: Ebook II was equally launched on PSVR, Quest, SteamVR and Pico, and the studio even launched one of many few VR video games for the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional, a multiplayer technique title known as Glassbreakers.
In Could 2026, Polyarc tried to succeed in a non-VR viewers with Moss: The Forgotten Relic, which collected the Moss collection right into a single sport and reimagined the gameplay so that you did not want a VR headset to play. It is unclear how effectively the sport has bought, but it surely evidently wasn’t sufficient to maintain the studio afloat. The larger difficulty is likely to be adjustments to the VR ecosystem that made it tougher to get new initiatives off the bottom. Meta started its huge pivot away from the metaverse in the direction of AI merchandise in the beginning of this yr. Not solely did the corporate shut a number of of its personal VR studios, however its retreat from the house seemingly made getting new VR video games funded even tougher.
Despite the fact that the studio is closed, all of Polyarc’s video games stay out there to buy. When you have a VR headset amassing mud someplace and have not tried them, they’re completely value enjoying.
