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Echo VR shutdown

128ajb
Explorer
To whoever it may concern, 
 
I am deeply saddened by the news that EchoVR will be closing its doors on 1st August 2023. The Echo community is huge, established and it will be a great loss to many of us should the game disappear entirely. This is why I write to you today, to show that there is still demand for the game and I hope that you will reconsider your approach to close down the servers for Echo VR on the due date. 
 
We do not need much, or for the game to continue to be developed, simply the request to keep the servers open so that we can continue to enjoy and play this game with the friends we have made and the teams we have formed over the years since the game was released. 
 
If it is a matter of cost, I am willing to offer, along with many others, monetary contribution to upkeep the servers. A small subscription fee each month should be enough to keep your servers open and I hope you will read and consider this proposal.
 
The community is huge, still growing, and it would be a shame to cut its potential short. There are community members holding tournaments, finding funding for LAN events and all this hard work will be lost the moment you shut down the servers for this game. Some of us play it daily, for exercise, with friends and for mental health and all this will also be lost. 
 
There is no good reason to cut the life of the game short just because you are putting resources into another game. I am not asking much of you, simply to honour the community that has dedicated so much of their time, energy and sweat into what I believe to be one of the best e-sports in the VR world today. 
I hope this message finds the relevant people with power to overturn the decision in August.
 
I would like to stress the importance of Echo VR to our community and I sincerely hope that you / Meta, reconsiders the decision to shut down the servers on the 1st August 2023.
196 REPLIES 196

Recz-
Honored Guest

Please, do not shut echo vr down. It is your top multiplayer game and you still make money off of it. So many people bought so many cosmetics that will just be destroyed.

peritectoid
Honored Guest

It is unclear to me why the game cannot be shared with the community as an open source software package. What would be a limited amount of work for the passionate developers responsible for the code-base would build a large amount of community goodwill, considering that >12,000+ (growing) people have already expressed a desire to continue playing the game, even if it is no longer officially supported by Meta or its subsidiaries. Meta has ostensibly claimed that they want the Metaverse to be an open platform, but at every step they behave in anti-competitive and anti-community ways.

 

Why keep it private, and eliminate one of the most enthusiastic user-bases currently extant on any VR platform? Of course it is within the intellectual property rights of Meta to keep the game proprietary, but it seems the only reason, truly, to do so is to limit available competition to software within Meta's official ecosystem.

 

I understand the game was not turning a profit, and the required maintenance and future development would be significantly more costly than the revenue it stands to generate, but stationary code also generates no revenue and spurs no enthusiasm, and further erodes our confidence in Meta as a steward of communities built in VR. The solution is as simple as posting a repository for EchoVR on GitHub with an MIT or other open license, and leaving it to the community to determine what is next. Meta would not be responsible or liable for the redistributed game. This would be far from unprecedented, and would have a marginal cost of virtually nothing, yet the request is being refused with no reasonable explanation.

 

With hesitancy to do business with Meta in the future,

Peritectoid

#SaveEchoVR

YoshiJR-
Honored Guest

Echo is fun and there are millions of people that love the game. there are many people that love the game. there are leagues. KEEP THE GAME PLZ

SentientEnergy
Honored Guest

This game is my go to, I play it almost daily and most of the time it’s the reason I pick up my headset, I may switch to another game but I start playing because I’m in the mood to play echo arena. With it gone I honestly don’t know how often I’m going to be picking up my headset if at all. I wish nothing but the worst to anyone who had a part to play in this decision being made. The only correct course of action from here is a complete reversal of this policy. The only way in which this is okay is if the “next game” they’re talking about contains echo arena within it but even so it should’ve been announced first because now everyone is pissed

why buy a head set that will just delete games that you spend most you're time playing 

#metadiesinAugust

EggOwO
Honored Guest

I started playing this game day 1 of the quest open beta. Over the years, I have some of the best friends I have, and some of the best memories. You are taking a lot more away than just a game. Please, think of the players. #SaveEcho

x_Skittles_x
Honored Guest

#SAVEECHOARENA #SAVEECHOVR #HELPUSMETA

ZeGunslinger-
Honored Guest

Echo has been so much more to a game to me. It has been a second home, a place where I can escape the real world and play with my friends in a game we all love. If the game isn’t going to stay alive atleast make it open source with peer to peer server hosting. #SaveEcho

BlackHeartDB
Honored Guest

They can't get away with this. There's gotta be a lawsuit in this somewhere. Especially right after taking everyones money with the last battle pass, never once mentioning it's going to be free and saying you can only get it through purchasing the premium pass and then giving it all for free RIGHT after it ended.