in around 2023-early 2024, I had gotten my first ever VR headset. A terrible little used Oculus Quest 2, and it was amazing for me, as I hadnt even had a computer at this point. leading up to this, I was super excited for the games I could play in VR, and one of the things at the top of the list was Rec Room. It was basically the closest thing you could get to Roblox in VR, so I was very excited, thinking of all the things I could do in it, watching all the popular youtubers (mostly BillehBawb/BVR honestly) talk about all the new updates, all the hidden Forbidden One lore and stuff, and I occasionally played it flatscreen with my friends that did have VR headsets. It honestly wasn't even that special in VR, just as someone who had never even TRIED VR, I was excited to finally see this game in the way that it was intended.
and it was so worth it. I didnt do all the things I thought i could do, i never really CREATED in it, but to me, it was magical. I spent so many hours in the fun little chill hangout spots (like ^LoftApartment and ^CozyChillhop) that I had seen every corner of on my TV screen with my Xbox before. Meeting so many new people, sharing interactions, feeling like I really was in a new world filled with fun kind people just like me, was.. amazing, to say the least.
The first ever major youtube video I ever edited on my channel was a Rec Room one, pretty sure right after I got my PC in June 2025. Now that video sucked hog ass, but that kickstarted me and inspired me to go even bigger, and now I'm pretty skilled with Premiere, actually able to make competent videos.
Rec Room had kinda faded out for me, I occasionally checked on it when I was bored, but I didn't spend as much time as I had before. and it saddened me every time they added some weird ♥♥♥♥, like the crazy amount of microtransactions, it did honestly feel like it had fell into the same pit of capitalism like Roblox did, but, yknow atleast it was still kicking.
Fast forward to 2026, and in March, Rec Room announced that they are going to be shutting down the servers since they cannot afford to keep them going.
this, major piece of my life, something I spent hours on with my quest so long ago, the game I made friends in, is shutting down, with no one else ever going to be able to play it again.
It's just.. sad. I can't explain the how it felt, This game is, kind of a major piece of history for me. There was a point in time where I played it for several days straight, and now... It is gone. Community revivals exist, sure. but they will never have the same feeling as the original game did.
On June 1st, the day of the shutdown, I spent time with all my friends inside Rec Room. I met up with them, as the servers were getting unbearably laggy and broken, and then eventually I decided to leave them for a bit and I loaded into ^LoftApartment. My first ever experience in Rec Room. One of the most memorable rooms I've ever played in, and it hadn't changed a bit. There was another guy who had also been in the room, and we spent a long ass time just talking to eachother about our experiences in this game. He'd been playing since the PSVR1 days, I'd been playing only 3 years before it shut down. His name was phantom/@joker57, and for the last couple of moments I had in rec room, i had spent it with him. Eventually though, my game crashed. I loaded quickly back into Rec Room right as the time had ticked over the point where the servers were going to shut down, and somehow, I was still ingame. I decided to join some people that I hadnt spoke to in years, just joining random folks on my friends list still somehow ingame, and about an hour later, we discovered that the servers were gone. No one can log in anymore. If we left, we would not come back. One by one, the players in our like, 10 people lobby were dropping. People eventually just froze and crashed, and they could not come back, until it was two people, me, and someone I didn't know who didnt have a mic. I was the next to disconnect. I tried loading it back up, but no. It is gone.
In the coming days, all the websites went down, (rec.net/recroom.com), the game was delisted from Steam and Oculus, and eventually, everything actually fully shut down, with no hope of it ever coming back outside of community revival projects. I haven't deleted it. I still own the game, it's still on my old ass Quest 2, and here I am 3 months later making a damn essay just reviewing this actually dead game. Needless to say, I miss it. Even if I didn't play it all that much beforehand. It just saddens me that new people getting into VR like I was, won't be able to experience this amazing game like how it was. No one will anymore. It's genuinely terrible.
but, even after its shutdown
even after they started killing their game with microtransactions
even after all the controversies
you should still make sure to give it your Rec Room best.
