The American studio Ready at Dawn, known for The Order: 1886 and the Lone Echo series of VR adventures, lost its independence in 2020 and ceased to exist more than 20 years after its founding.
Image source: Sony Interactive Entertainment
The Android Central portal, citing internal correspondence from Oculus Studios, reported that the company that owns Ready at Dawn, Meta✴, has decided to close the studio. A corporate representative confirmed this in a statement to Gematsu.
Meta✴ expects that the move will help the Reality Labs division, which deals with augmented and virtual reality technologies, to remain within the new budgetary conditions (−20% by 2026).
According to Android Central, Meta✴ is encouraging former Ready at Dawn employees to join other Oculus Studios locations and hopes to retain as many employees as possible.
Image source: Oculus Studios
Ready at Dawn was founded in 2003 by people from Naughty Dog and Blizzard Entertainment. The studio became famous thanks to the God of War duology for PSP and the cinematic action film The Order: 1886 (2015) for PS4.
Insider shinobi602, citing his sources, stated that Ready at Dawn was planning a sequel to The Order: 1886 with an emphasis on gameplay, but the project did not receive the green light, and therefore the studio was bought by Meta✴ in the summer of 2020.
The first and last Ready at Dawn game under the wing of Meta✴ was Lone Echo 2. The project was released in October 2021 for Oculus Rift VR headsets and earned 78 out of 100% on the Metacritic aggregator.