Rec Room (video game)

Rec Room was a virtual reality massively multiplayer online game developed by Rec Room Inc. (formerly Against Gravity Corp.). It was available on various platforms, including PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and Meta Quest. Following financial issues within Rec Room Inc., the game was planned to close on June 1, 2026, coinciding with its tenth anniversary.

Rec Room centered around users voluntarily accessing various in-game experiences (referred to as "rooms") created by Rec Room Inc. (referred to as "Rec Room Originals"), as well as custom rooms created by players. These rooms could be accessed using in-game menus, doors found in other rooms (referred to as "room doors"), as well as through invitations sent by other users.

Rec Room ceased operations on June 1, 2026.

Rec Room supported optional virtual reality (VR) gameplay across compatible devices, including headsets from Meta, Pico 4 and Steam VR platforms. In virtual reality mode, players interacted with the environment using motion controllers, enabling object manipulation and spatial movement. A non-VR mode was also available, allowing access to the game without a headset.

Players were able to explore the space around them within the confines of their physical floor space while roaming further by using the controller buttons to teleport a short distance, with minimal to no virtual reality sickness. A "walking" mode enabled players to move continuously rather than teleporting, although this posed a higher risk of motion sickness.

Throughout rooms, players could encounter and interact with other players in real time through voice and text chat, being represented by their avatar. Players could choose to friend, invite, mute, block, or report other players, as well as "cheer" them for various reasons (equivalent to a "like" on most social media platforms), or form a party with other players to travel between rooms together. As players engaged with Rec Room, they would gradually earn experience and eventually obtain an additional level on their account, with an indicator displayed by their username showing their level, and the player would receive a package containing a gift upon achieving a new level.

On October 2nd, 2017, Rec Room released the "Maker Pen", a tool resembling a hot glue gun that could draw shapes in 3D, which players could use to create their own rooms. Through the Maker Pen, players could also use the Circuits V1 system introduced on Feb 15th, 2018, and the later introduced Circuits V2, Rec Room's visual programming language based on C#. The game announced a partnership with Unity for Rec Room Studio, which allowed users with a Rec Room Plus subscription (later changed to all users) to use Unity to create more advanced rooms.

When Rec Room was first released, there was no clear creation system. All games were made by the developer team and released as Rec Room Originals. Their first attempt at a creation system was the sandbox machine, a machine which was a stationary object with a simple UI in order to spawn objects such as weapons, sports props, and furniture. and a rudimentary "Maker Pen" system to build. This early version of the Maker Pen featured very few tools and functions compared to recent versions.

Shortly after the Maker Pen was introduced into the game, a system of visual coding was also introduced. This system was developed mainly from 2018 to 2021, and worked with a system of wires. In the code, events ran constantly. An integer value was assigned to each event which could be changed by wiring, and when an event occurred, an integer would send to the next chip.

As a chip would detect a change in integer value at the input, it would be able to send output to the next chip. Players were assigned player IDs, which served as the primary form of integer input in order to keep track of players.

In 2021, Rec Room introduced a more feature-rich version of the circuit system called Circuits V2 (often abbreviated "CV2"). CV2 chips had a different design than Circuits V1, with gray rectangular chips with ports on either side, where each port represented a different kind of input or output. Circuits V1 continued existing alongside CV2.

The most common types of ports in CV2 included an orange arrow-shaped port, (an "input exec" port), triggered by an exec signal sent from another chip, and multiple colored rectangular ports; a blue port representing a floating-point, a green port representing an integer value, and a purple port representing a string or text input.

When an event was triggered, input ports wired to that event would have their data updated, either locally or globally. The code would then be accessible as an output connectable to another input.

CV2 was intended to be a less buggy, easier to understand, and more powerful system than Circuits V1. CV2 was actively in development until the game's shutdown announcement.

Rec Room Studio logo

On September 23, 2022, Rec Room announced Rec Room Studio at Rec Con 2022. This was a partnership between Rec Room and game engine Unity in order to bring professional-level tools into Rec Room creation.

Rec Room Studio's access was gradually rolled out starting in 2023, with it at first only being accessible to handpicked creators before gradually being rolled out to more players, finally opening access to anyone who met the following requirements:

• Active Rec Room Plus membership
• Player level of 30+
• One or more published rooms
• Good moderation history
  • No bans of 7 or fewer days within the last 90 days
  • No bans of 8+ days in the last 2 years
  • No violations of the Creator Code of Conduct

Rooms in Rec Room could be opened up as a scene within Unity using Rec Room Studio. It could then be edited with Unity tools, and allowed users to import assets and textures, custom sound, and custom animations, as well as utilize Unity's Terrain Editor and Unity ProBuilder. The game could then be uploaded to Rec Room and published, provided it passed an automated scan for inappropriate content. Creating an invention within Rec Room Studio rooms would also require passing moderation before the invention could be created.

Rooms 2.0 was meant to be the default creation mode in Rec Room as the game expanded its tools. Despite it having formerly having been Rooms 1.0, a simpler version of the building system, Rooms 2.0 had many more useful features which were often used in creation. Amongst the most important features of Rooms 2.0 was hierarchical building. This structured building in a hierarchy, so that one component, called a "container", could be placed into another.

Rec Room later stopped pushing Rooms 2.0, as there was a barrage of community complaints, and made Rooms 1.0 the default mode again. They also moved several notable features of Rooms 2.0 to Rooms 1.0, such as unlimited ink, room offers, inventory items, and Rooms 2.0 circuit components.

Both Rec Room Studio and Circuits V2 were supported in Rooms 2.0, but Circuits V1 and other features which were parts of Rooms 1.0, such as certain props, were not available.

Rec Room also had a large variety of creative programs which were supported in-game and on its Discord server in order to boost levels of creativity. This included creative classes. A player could apply to teach a class, and if accepted, they were allowed to create a classroom and allow students to enlist.

Maker pen classes could teach many subjects, but the most common were Rooms 2.0, building, circuiteering, and Rec Room Studio. Amongst the incentives for teaching a class were in-game gowns, in purple for 10 hours, orange for 20, and green for 30. Taking a class could lead to the receiving of an in-game graduation gown.

Workshops were also led in Rec Room. To become a workshop host, application was necessary. Workshops were creative events where creators could join and free-create in themes led by the host. Workshop hosts could gain Maker Pens from leading a workshop.

Creative events led by staff also occurred. The two most prominent were the Rec Room Gallery and the Maker Pen Class Q&A. The Rec Room Gallery was hosted every Wednesday at 8pm Eastern Standard Time, and featured submitted inventions, or creations, by creators. The Maker Pen Class Q&A was much akin to a workshop and occurred on Fridays and Sundays, although to create in it prior experience was necessary.

On March 30, 2026, Rec Room announced on their blog and across their social media that the game would shut down all operations of the game servers on June 1, 2026 (12 p.m. PT), along with Rec.net and Rec Room Studio. Rec Room cited its inability to reach profitability as the reason for the shutdown. Previously, Rec Room had stated that for every $1 in revenue, after platform fees, they would receive 70 cents from their own original content, and just 30 cents from user-generated content after creator payouts.

Rec Room had also previously stated they had enough runway to continue operating into 2029, but later stated that they chose to shut down sooner because 'we basically tried all the ideas we had to reach sustainable profitability' and hadn't succeeded, and wanted to give people months of advance notice while also taking care of their staff. At the time of the announcement, Rec Room had reached over 150 million players.

Immediately after the announcement, new account creation, friend requests, and new Rec Room+ subscriptions were disabled. Token purchases and gift card redemptions were set to end on May 1, 2026, followed by the end of creator token earnings on May 18, 2026. A final creator payout was scheduled for June 1, 2026, the same day the game, Rec.net, and Rec Room Studio's online services were to go offline.

After the announcement was made, users were also allowed to bulk download their in-game photos, and an avatar memento that the company described as a "final report card." Creators were also able to download room and invention data via the Steam PC build in non-playable formats intended to allow recreation of rooms elsewhere, such as in Unity.

Rec Room Studio (not to be confused with Rec Room the game) users can still access cached rooms on their local computer following the shutdown of Rec Room, in "limited offline mode".

Less than a day prior to the day of the shutdown, Rec Room published an end credits video, ending with the quote "We created another dimension. With the span of our attention."

Rec Room shut down at 12:00 P.M. Pacific Standard Time on June 1, 2026. Currently, the platform's primary website, rec.net, is still active. It was previously stated that rec.net would go offline on the same day Rec Room shut down. Alternative third-party implementations of Rec Room with still operational servers exist, such as Radium.

On January 12, 2018, Rec.net was publicly released for Rec Room as a way to see and download photos you take in game, and also manage your account. In the year prior to its closure, Rec.net still served its original purpose with additional features like managing rooms, purchasing Rec Room+, Tokens, and others.

Rec Room's in-game currency, Tokens, was earned throughout rooms created by Rec Room (Paintball, Laser Tag, Etc), purchased using real money, or earned by subscribing to Rec Room Plus (stylized as Rec Room+), which granted several benefits, including the ability to make custom shirts, sell user-generated content (also known as inventions), a 10% discount on all things purchasable with tokens (excluding items in rooms), access to the Season Pass Plus, the ability to use Maker AI in dorm rooms, and a special name tag with the ability to add emojis. It also gave access to a bot called Roomie, an AI companion similar to ChatGPT or Claude, which doubled rewards earned in RROs (Rec Room Originals) and was powered by energy purchased with Tokens. Tokens earned by selling items could be exchanged for real money.

The Rec Room logo used in 2016

Seattle-based development studio Rec Room Inc. (formerly Against Gravity Corp.) was co-founded in April 2016 by Nicholas Fajt, Cameron Brown, Dan Kroymann, Bilal Orhan, Josh Wehrly, and John Bevis. Prior to the company's founding, CEO Fajt worked as a program manager on the HoloLens team at Microsoft. Kroymann worked on the same team after working on the Xbox team. CCO Brown worked as the creative director of HoloLens.

In 2016 and early 2017, the company raised $5 million in funding for the development of Rec Room and its community. According to Fajt, the company will keep the game free to download.

In June 2019, Rec Room Inc. announced that the company raised an additional $24 million over two rounds of funding. In December 2020, Rec Room Inc. announced an additional $20 million in funding.

In March 2021, Rec Room Inc. announced another funding round of $100 million with a valuation of $1.25 billion leading to its unicorn status. In December 2021, Rec Room Inc. announced that they raised $145 million during another funding round, bringing the studio's value up to $3.5 billion.

In March 2025, Rec Room underwent a significant layoff of 16% of its staff, citing a "more challenging fundraising environment" and a slowdown in gaming market growth. This did not prevent a more severe layoff in August 2025, where 50% of the remaining staff were laid off. In March 2026, the company announced that it would shut down the game on June 1st.

Most of the music heard in Rec Room Originals was composed by creative director Cameron Brown, whose in-game username was "gribbly", using Reason.

Dan Ackerman, writing for CNET, described Rec Room as VR's "killer app". In January 2017, Ars Technica reported that trolling and harassment were major issues for Rec Room. In June 2017, MIT Technology Review contributor Rachel Metz described it as a great example of VR's potential for social interaction while criticizing its underdeveloped anti-abuse features. Filmmaker Joyce Wong described Rec Room as her choice of "most interesting piece of art in 2017".

• Official website
• Official community website