Rec Room to shut down after failing to achieve profitability from 150m players

• The platform reached more than 150m players globally but failed to generate enough revenue to cover operating costs.
• Players will lose access to the game and all online services once servers go offline at noon Pacific time on June 1st.
• Creators will stop earning token rewards after May 18th, with final payouts scheduled for the shutdown date.

Social gaming platform Rec Room will shut down permanently on June 1st, 2026 after a decade-long run that attracted more than 150 million players worldwide. 

The company said the decision was driven by an inability to build a sustainable business model despite strong user engagement.

Over its lifetime, Rec Room claimed that players formed more than half a billion friendships on the platform and collectively spent the equivalent of 68,000 years in-game. 

However, operating costs consistently outpaced revenue and recent changes in the virtual reality market further narrowed the path to profitability.

“Despite this popularity, we never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business. Our costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue we brought in," said the company in a post. 

“We spent a long time trying to find a way to make the numbers work. But with the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming, the path to profitability has gotten tough enough that we've made the difficult decision to shut things down."

Shutdown timeline

Beginning immediately, users can no longer create new accounts, add friends or subscribe to the platform’s premium membership tier. 

Monetised user-generated content creation has also been halted, while existing premium memberships will remain active until the final shutdown date.

From May 1st, players will no longer be able to purchase tokens or redeem gift cards and creators will stop earning token rewards after May 18th. 

All online services, including the rec.net website and development tools linked to Rec Room Studio, will go offline at noon Pacific time on June 1st.

The company said it chose to announce the closure while it still had the capacity to wind down operations responsibly, process final creator payouts and provide users with tools to download selected account data before services end.