AltspaceVR Shutting Down!

[Kevinaki]

Here's the email message:

It is with a tremendously heavy heart that I let you all know that we are closing down AltspaceVR on August 3rd, 7PM PDT. The company has run into unforeseen financial difficulty and we can’t afford to keep the virtual lights on anymore. This is surprising, disappointing, and frustrating for every one of us who have put our passion and our hopes into AltspaceVR. We know it will probably feel similarly for you. 

You’ve made AltspaceVR one of the best places to be in VR (or on the internet). I won’t try to write down all of the memories that are flooding my heart right now of all of the laughter, puns, fun and friendliness that existed in this community. There have been spontaneous concerts, new friendships, marriages, surprise serenades (looking at you Shoo Shoo!) and too many warm hugs from Claire to count. We hosted so many firsts! And we still have the record for most people in VR at one time (were any of you there at Reggie’s first performance?). We’ve also seen so many community members come into their own and host karaoke nights, improv, movie nights and meetups for people all across the globe. 

We are all humbled by what you made of this virtual oasis. Thank you for spending your time building, hosting, and making the best community we could have wished for. Please take the next week to make sure those connections live on past AltspaceVR. Because if you do, then what we built will really live on. 

There have been many tears and there will probably be a few more to come. I’ve given up wiping off the mist that clouds my headset. Please join us for a final farewell party on 8/3. At the end of the party, we will be shutting down AltspaceVR. 

AltspaceVR will officially close down on Thursday, August 3rd @ 5-7pm PT. Please make sure to meet up with any friends before then to be able to stay in touch.

You can save all of your photos and friends list by going to https://account.altvr.com/events and clicking "Friends" and "Photos". Click CTRL + S on PC or CMD + S on Mac. Make sure it says "Webpage complete". The full sized images will be downloaded.  

For more information about this sad news, please visit our blog. 

- Keegan

[theicephoenix]

Just as I purchased my rift 😞 are their any alternatives?

[Kevinaki]

@theicephoenix there's:

•  vTime (https://vtime.net) 
• Rec Room (https://www.againstgrav.com/rec-room/)
• High Fidelity (https://highfidelity.com/)
• Facebook Spaces (https://www.facebook.com/spaces)

I actually thought Altspace VR was going to be around for a while...

[Anonymous]

Many of us from that community are pretty bummed.  Unsure where we'll be deviating out towards, but it's really the fact that it was the only good multi-platform social platform for VR (before anyone says otherwise, vTime is junk), so our community that consisted of PC-VR, phone VR, phone 2D, and computer 2d individuals will be broken up.

[vannagirl]

This is sad to see someone go, i have never tried this but i hear good things and seen their stream videos of Reggie.

Also was a follower of Cymatic Bruce on a Sunday streaming all the latest VR demos etc before he went here to work so i hope they all manage to go on in VR somehow



Also, before Kevin somehow turns it into a story about Oculus 😕

(Oculus is the one driving ) 😉

[Zenbane]

Very nice @vannagirl
That GIF looks about right. Spot on, really!

I didn't use AltSpace much, but I did think that the app was well made. It was a great piece of VR Software for those who purchased the Rift upon release. It helped show early adopters of the CV1 exactly what the future entails. Other social VR app's will take the lead someday soon. In the meantime, I'm sure the members of the AltSpace team will move on to bigger and better things.

[vannagirl]

Yes me too, it sucks losing your job and i imagine one you love it is much much worse

Good luck to all @Altvr

[Anonymous]

I think the team over at AltSpace should apply for a job with Oculus to continue adding their ideas to the community as a whole still. Not sure if Oculus is looking into hiring or not - by this I do mean the Facebook Spaces. Would be neat to see the team continuing working on something they really wanted to have happen.

I like projects like these, but they will butt spaces once more and more start to make their own pretty quickly for the limited amount of users at this time. I do wonder why this project had problems though with money? I think it would've been a great place for ads to be display allowing a small trickle of cash flow to come in for up keep on the servers.

That or look into other sources of income with small transactions. Then again, it took I think the game was call Second Life(?) a long time to get right in the first place for the same idea. A social land escape for people.

[nalex66]

It's a shame to see AltSpaceVR shutting down. I haven't used it in a while, but I did go to that first Reggie Watts event, and it was my first experience of hanging out with a large group of people in VR.

[kojack]

The avatars really needed better customisation.
But it was still an interesting program.

I used to enjoy it when Vive owners would show off their hand tracking to rift owners, then I'd slide past with my leap motion tracking. 🙂
That's one thing it did fairly well, supported a bunch of hardware like Leap Motion and Perception Neuron.