Spatial, the parent company to Animal Company studio Wooster Games, announced it’s closing down its own Spatial Creator platform, ending free and pro subscription tiers and discontinuing 3D world hosting next month—effectively ending the platform’s metaverse ambitions.
Spatial, which released its app at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2020, confirmed that Enterprise users won’t be affected, as the platform will remain operational and continue receiving support under existing agreements. Its Creator metaverse program however, which included both free and paid tiers targeted at individual users and small businesses, is getting the boot.
The company outlined the decision in a blog post, noting that it follows years of rising infrastructure costs associated with hosting and scaling its multiuser 3D worlds.
According to CEO Jinha Lee, Spatial explored alternatives including new pricing models, tiered hosting plans, and partnerships, but concluded that maintaining the platform would require “passing rising costs directly to you at levels that are not sustainable for independent developers and small studios.”
“We were not able to find a model that kept the Creator platform viable without compromising the experience you and your communities deserve,” Lee says.
Spatial says Creator-tier users will lose full access to the platform on July 27th, which will include the permanent deletion of and all creator-hosted files. Users will be allowed to export work before that date, as the company has already sent out download links for uploaded assets via email. The company is also refunding subscriptions for web users, while customers who subscribed through app stores must cancel manually.
The closure of its Creator program marks the end of Spatial’s nine-year effort to build an open platform for immersive social experiences, which notably supported a host of devices, including Quest and PC VR headsets, and mobile and flatscreen monitors.
This follows a number of other social XR platform closures, notably Rec Room, which closed on June 1st, and Meta’s own Horizon Worlds, which has pivoted to mostly focus on mobile users moving forward.
Spatial says the company is now putting more focus on its in-house game studio, Wooster Games, known for break-out free-to-play VR hit Animal Company, in addition to developing more original titles. At the time of this writing, Animal Company is the third best-selling game on Quest, featuring over 200,000 reviews at a [4.8/5] user rating.
