Another Legendary Studio Falls Victim to Mass Layoffs. Meta Shuts Down Devs of God of War for PSP and The Order 1886
Ready at Dawn Studios ended its life as a result of Meta's efforts to limit Reality Labs' massive losses. The source of the information is the Android Central website.
The latest information indicates that Meta Corporation has shut down the Ready at Dawn Studios team. The developer behind Daxtera, the Lone Echo series, and the portable God of War dilogy is set to be another victim of widespread layoffs in the video game industry.
The information isn't yet official. However, Android Central allegedly obtained access to a non-public note received by studio employees. Meta company has announced that it is urging them to join other teams within Oculus Studios, as Ready at Dawn is being shut down immediately.
The end of the studio is to be the aftermath of the decision to reduce the expenses of Reality Labs, the department responsible for VR production, which includes Oculus Studios. Ready at Dawn belonged to this group since mid-2020 - after being bought by Meta (then Facebook).
However, since then, the team has essentially delivered no new project aside from the sequel Lone Echo, released in 2021. In 2023, Meta ended the existence of Echo VR (via The Medium). Ironically, this was supposed to allow Ready at Dawn to focus on a new project.
Although the developer hasn't released any hits for years, players aren't happy with this decision. Some argue that this is another addition to the long list of reputable studios that quickly ended after being acquired by a big company. Some online users also argue that the spending on Ready at Dawn was just a small part of the tens of billions of dollars in losses that Reality Labs has been experiencing annually for the past 4 years. In the second quarter of 2024, the company lost 4.5 billion dollars (via NBC), and from 2020 to 2024, it lost 50 billion dollars (via Android Central).
