Meta just killed one of the Biggest VR Games (for no reason) 

PART ONE: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tNs5lQg9LIc.html -EDIT regarding a conversation I had with the creator of VEGA Mod Loader: There is no guarantee that content will be moddable into Echo. Echo runs on a proprietary "Ready at Dawn Engine" so modding in content will be more difficult. For now the mod loader DOES allow loading levels. Being able to "switch servers" is actually something that can be done without the use of a mod loader. Still basically; we need to hope that RAD will provide keys or some crazy person can reverse engineer the Echo servers to emulate them I'm gonna be SO OVER when people realize that the only reason I criticize Meta is because I actually want them to succeed with all my heart and push VR to the masses but also just want them to make decisions that are pro consumer and not be evil for .2 seconds. Discord.gg/thrill

You have no idea how much it means to this game's community that despite not even being a part of it, you're still making one of the largest efforts to save it. Thank you.

As someone in the PR field, META makes me tear my hair out. They are textbook exactly what not to do as a company trying to grow a community

"low 10 thousands?!?!?!?!" thats insane for vr! its really unfortunate the direction that meta is going right now and i really hope this doesnt result in vr dying out in popularity if it hasn't started already. really hope someone will be able to find a way to keep echo up

Thank you for your support of Echo VR. We will be fighting until the end to keep echo alive. 6 LAN tournaments happened last year (3 by myself) and 3 are planned for this year. The game isn't even close to dying, it is growing as the biggest VR eSport.

Meta's detatchment from the VR community is absolutely disgusting. Meta's disconnect from the average consumer hurts to see, first, the killing of oculus, now the killing of a community. Having been an oculus user for two years, this hurts.

It's crazy how the Quest 2 was revealed by Mark floating around in Echo Arena. And now, not long before the quest 3 launches, they are killing that same game

The second you talked about that mans background, I quietly stood up and my jaw dropped. Meta isn't just in bad hands, It's in malicious hands

Echo VR was the first game I played when I got a VR headset, it holds a special place in my heart, and I've felt so happy watching as teammates become more than teammates and become friends, I loved how exhilarating it was to grab onto an enemy and punch the guy to grab the disk. It makes me extremely sad to see this masterpiece of a game get shut down.

This is a symptom of a much deeper cultural issue with Meta's entire VR strategy

As someone who is deep in the community, it is so painful, like so much time wasted and destroyed. The ready at dawn developers are amazing people and cared about the game until they got ripped away.

It's really too bad that Facebook/Meta ended up as such a dominant force in the VR gaming industry. It's pretty close to the bottom of the list of entities that can be trusted to do the right thing.

I come from a console homebrew scene and my first thought was "I wonder how we could make custom servers for this" Great video, as always, keep it up, thrillseeker and echo community!

You’re not being ridiculous, nor blowing things out of proportion. If anything, more outcry like this is needed. We all had the very real fear that Facebooks acquisition of Oculus could cripple our beloved and still niche VR industry, and it’s incredibly disappointing to see those fears come into fruition. Glad to hear that there’s advocates out here trying to do something about the pain, Thank you for your consistent soldiering my friend.

ThrillSeeker, thank you so much for this 2-part series. On behalf of the echo community, we love you, and are so happy that you are speaking up about this

i’ve been playing echo for four years and please don’t stop this series this could be our chance to change how meta handles things and teach them how much better things could be done

Thrill's a real one for speaking up. If we do nothing when they come for others, nobody will be there to speak up when they come for us.

I don't know if you know, but Meta also killed Crayta last week after buying it a year ago. They intended to connect craytas building capabilities to their horizon worlds. They even announced all that in their last years events and they showed their horizon characters walking around in crayta. But last week, we (the game/content creators on crayta) got informed that they now killed it and will go offline in less than a month.

I met my best friend in echo and I’ve known her for 3 years now. It crushes me that the birthplace of the most beautiful and unique friendship I’ve ever had is going to just disappear because meta is being lazy and uncaring for their customers. #saveecho

Hey ThrillSeekerVR, as a former dev who worked on Echo VR Quest port and Echo Combat before Meta acquired RAD . I wanted to say that I enjoy your videos and glad you made one on about Echo VR. The game is near and dear to my heart as with most former and current devs at RAD. Unfortunately I feel that the game was always on life support in terms of live ops. The higher ups never gave it the full attention it deserved to grow, the content stayed stagnant for so long. I felt the last major shake up was when my team created the April Fools event in 2019. When I realized things weren’t going to change I left but I did have hope that it could change for the better, sadly that is not the case. As for Echo Combat: many of us felt it was a compelling experience but it was not design with Quest in mind and it was deemed too intense to port over, and even designing the lobby to work on Quest and Rift (which had Combat in the lobby) was a lot of challenge. Hope that gives people some context. I truly hope that Echo VR gets saved for all of us who love it so much but I don’t think that’s where it’s headed. I will say that RAD is a talented studio and if Echo VR comes to a close it does open them up to craft another amazing game so there is an upside.

I haven't played echo vr in around 2 years, never really got into it and only ever played private with my friends for the most part but when I heard it was shutting down even I was angry, it has been one of the biggest games on the whole of vr I'd say for ages now and seeing people who have put years and years into this game just get turned away and have their progress just whipped off the planet, all of their cosmetics and the time they put into getting good at the game plus the fun memories and friends they made just boils my blood I really hope this game survives somehow and meta actually starts making good decisions.

Man, 5 years in the arena for all of this. This community is what has been holding me down to VR. Without it, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do now.

I played echo last night just so I didn’t forget to play before it shut down. While I had to the usual squeaker encounters, there were some encounters that equally warmed and broke my heart. The one that stood out was a guy on my team who just started belting out the song “Hellfire” from the movie/musical The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I recognized this and we started singing together. It was by far the funniest interactions I’ve ever had in virtual reality. To know that this kind of experience is going away is so depressing. I hope we can find some way to save Echo.

Once more, thank you so much for covering this. I know tons of other users from echo have thanked you, but truly we cannot thank you enough, this game has allowed me to meet some incredible people and form friendships that I truly believe will last a lifetime, having met people that are now like family to me, I orgininalky played echo because it was free, so sure, why not, then I saw that vrml was a thing and began working to that point, it was then that I began talking within the game, becoming active within the community and it rapidly became my favourite ever game, 2 years later, and I truly have met some of the greatest people in the world, and while I know these friendships will extend beyond echo, as they already do, the thought of not being able to just enter lobby and say hi to the users there, to say hi to the people that I perhaps only know as being those friendly chill people in lobby, to not be able to make anymore memories through this game is heartbreaking, and to see Meta willing to throw away such an insane community is horrible, so thank you so much for covering this and #SaveEcho

Thank you Thrill for your support! Lets keep on fighting for good! #saveEchoVr

This is a VR point in History @Thrillseeker - You are on the right side of it. Thank you for your support. Echo is not just a game or a service... it is a Sport... a Community... and a Home... It really makes life worth living for thousands of ppl... And taking that away is criminal... thank you x1000 for seeing us and providing hope ❤

Thank you Thrill. People must realise that this could be the beginning of the end of many other vr games too. If Meta gets away with this who knows which game will be next on the chopping board next? I don't want a future where it is a normal thing to lose access to games I love, never to return to them again. Not to mention that VR makes games feel more like experiences, not just regular media.

I don't own a Quest, and I've never played Echo, but this still really sucks because it will shake the faith of users and probably make them that little bit more hesitant to get really invested in any of Meta's future apps, and them being as big as they are, that's just bad for the whole VR community... ...In fact, it reminds me of a lot of Google's failed projects. You'll never attract those millions of users if nobody can trust you to keep your product around.

Thanks for making these videos, after watching critical’s video on it i watched both your videos on it to be more informed, you’re efforts are more important than you know

Thank you for standing up for us, Thrill! We need to fight this. #saveecho

As someone who has played echo for coming up on 3 years now. I want to say thank you, for fighting for us and along side of us, though you may not be apart of our community. We are grateful to have you fighting beside us

Please don't stop the videos, thank you for making these. It makes no sense they're making this change and I hate how corporate everything has become

I had never heard of this game up until now, but from the first minute I immediately recognised what it was based off of. I remember watching Ender’s Game when I was younger and dreaming that the zero-gravity training they did could one day be experienced, and now this game that could’ve finally given me and many others that chance is now shutting down…. Its such a shame.

The b-roll of boz and zuck playing echo was a nice touch. Really digging through the archives there. And I’m pleasantly surprised by the concrete solution that’s presented here - I really hope meta takes notice.

Can’t believe this, especially after all the creative mechanics and efforts that were put into the game

You got the moist shoutout, big hype, happy for you, and hope that signal boost broadens to even more people to be made aware.

I'm sobbing. This game is so important to me. I used to sell vr and demonstrate with playing this game. It was flashy and fun and it's early beta community made me so happy. I NEVER play online competitive. Ive always felt unwelcome and frustrated. This was the first game that I felt like we were all on the same level learning and growing together. Saying you were a new player with this community didn't grant scorn or laughs. Often people would drop what they were doing to help you learn. It was exciting and welcoming. Don't get me wrong, as a woman in gaming I had my share of negative experiences, but in comparison to the rest of the pvp market where chat was encouraged? I don't want to lose this. I hope people try to keep these things alive. I still want to play online. It would never be the same as an isolated pirated version with bots.

One of the craziest things to me, is that I don’t even think Meta of all companies, knows how communities are formed. If it already has a small community and you trample that, it surely hinders genuine growth from within. As in, the people who actually loved and cared for the community will not bring more people in. It’s like they’re trying to form an artificial community and I don’t even think those words go together

Your support means the world to our community Thrill. Thank you for putting real work into these videos. Having our game ripped from us is a pain that I want no other VR community forced to feel. But that pain is nothing compared to the people telling us how small we are (we aren't) or non VR users shouting, "why is it such a big deal it's just an old game?" This kind of content from creators like you is a truly appreciated source of validation for our outcries. While we might the current martyr this isn't just about Echo VR, its about all of people that understand the importance of what VR brings to all of us. So thank you and all of the other VR communities that understand what this could mean for the future of not just our game, but the future of VR as a whole. WWJCD? Well, we know. He'd leave.

I REALLY enjoy these videos that you have done, PLEASE have more news videos like this!

AMAZING SUMMARY TYTY! Had no idea boz as vp ads. They totally want to put the lone echo team onto something new / VR experiences.. My sequel pixel arcade 2 is not going to be using or bought out by them. It costs fuck all to keep servers online, if you make a popular game dude you gotta do everything in your power to keep it online.. awful

"All Meta has to do is the bare minimum" _Looks at Meta's track record_ Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath

Thank you so much thrillseeker. You don't understand how much this means to us, all of us appreciate it and we love you.

First off thank you for the content, news and entertainment but wow you hit us with the Serial experiments Lain "Layer Zero One"! Thank you! That brought back some fun awesome memories from yester years past.

You don't grow a forest by uprooting every sapling someone else planted.

Your support and passion mean the world to the echo community, thank you for raising awareness for us.

Hey Thrill, whatever you have of “melodramatic” is exactly what shows your passion for VR and why it’s been a pleasure to follow you for the past couple of years! ☺️ Hopefully things improve on the Meta side of things, VR and VR gaming deserve to be nurtured!

Came here after watching charlie's video. Great video. And sorry for the Echo VR situation :(

I only have fairly short bursts of using VR, about twice a year, as I'm away a lot of the time and very busy for the rest. Echo VR is always the first thing I go back to though, mostly for the combat part (actually the combat training in the lobby over the actual missions). I played this during the pandemic and it actually blew my mind how much it felt like I was really there with people, talking to them, gesturing etc. during a time when it just wasn't possible to do that in real life. I'm a bit too introvert to do VR Chat most of the time but playing this kind of forced me to end up interacting with people, in a good way, and I've met some really great people and had memorable interactions and fun games. Any time a friend gets into VR I always get them to join me in Echo VR first off. It's such a great introduction to the world of VR, and I've not played anything which comes close to how it feels to just float around in zero gravity like this. I seriously hope that Meta change their mind about this move. Why not just pass it to another developer if it's about the resources? Their excuse doesn't make sense when there are clearly many options available for a win-win scenario. It really does feel like they're just choosing the easiest pathway from an entirely selfish standpoint. If this is the way the early adopters of VR are treated then there's no way I'm going to carry on investing in this medium, despite how much I've enjoyed it. It feels like a cheap relationship with a company who clearly doesn't care. Why would I ever give them more time or money? I sincerely hope they realise what impact they're going to have through moves like this, even to people like me who only play a few times a year. Let's hope they realise this and change for the better before everyone completely loses faith in them.

I'm at a point where I'm suspecting Meta to have a negative-publicity campaign running. There is No way a company with so much hired talent is That stupid and self-sabotaging. It's sus I tell ye, sus.

There was this thing that happened in the D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) community very recently. The company, Wizards of the Coast basically tried to turn the community into a constant revenue via a new License stating they had to pay a high % of their media and community contents income. It also stated that any homebrewed content is now actually the companies to own and use. *...The community fought back.. HARD.* *and WON.* Lesson learned: Massive company or not, the community and people CAN AND DO have a say, but only if we speak as one.

Thanks so much for these videos. I love VR too, (I can't compete with you!) And I want the future of it to be bright. I just got an email from meta today saying support for onward is done in July for quest 1 which is what I have. Seems like this kind of thing will keep happening. It also makes me worry about not being able to use my quest at all eventually because it is tied to the Facebook login and they can just make it a useless brick. I miss the old console days when once you have the hardware and games you can just play it forever. I mean there are still NES around that work! Anyways, thanks for your content.

I don’t even mind VR taking another decade to reach its next high point if it means these meta scumbags watch their wallets burn

"Its measured in the low 10 thousands." and Horizons Worlds is measured in the low 100's.

You rockstar, thanks for all your hardwork making these videos! and lets hope john starts a new vr company?

I think of Meta as burning building, but instead of the firefighters (Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Bosworth) spraying it with water and trying to stop the fire, they spray it with gasoline.

7:01 I would link the "Games as a Service is Fraud" video in the description so people can see it. Either way thanks so much for including it here~! Its a super important video regarding this terrible industry practice imho.

one of lifes greatest lessons: when you love something that doesnt love u back

Love you for the hope you give at the end after so much passion. This game is vr games/sports for me

My friend bought a quest 2 the year before last and brought it over. It was Echo Arena that made me go out and buy a Q2 a couple weeks later. There are other cool free games and stuff but Echo was just a great VR experience and what convinced me to spend the money.

Thank you Thrill for putting into words what so many in the Echo community are feeling and observing with Meta! Echo is a truly spectacular game. With 6 degree of freedom movement in zero-g, a nearly endless bag of tricks to learn along a steep skill curve, and an athletic/proprioceptive marvel... it's my favorite game of all time... and I've only played 4 months. This astonished admiration grew so quickly for me... I can't even imagine what it would feel like to be a 5+ year veteran with all that's been happening. But the deepest point - this is a canary in the coal mine for all of VR. So to anyone reading, give the game a try! Share Thrill's video! Sign the petition! And if I see you in the arena between now and August (and beyond) I'll do my best to share what I know and help out any new players with a genuine interest to explore such a spectacular game. Thanks again!!

Damn, Thrill went demon-mode on this one framing all this into perspective lol Well done thrill

This is absolutely devastating. I have been playing this game since original release, and I never thought that it would be so ruthlessly ripped away. We must do everything that we can to protect this game and ensure its survival. I will be playing this game as much as I can to squeeze out all the enjoyment that I can while it lasts. I cannot believe that Meta would be so cruel and depriving in their behavior.

I really love Echo VR's concept of being an actual e-sport that requires legitimate skill. Personally, I think the only thing that was missing was it being slightly procedural in the placement of the barriers on the field. I think if you have that level of unpredictability, it would have made the game better.

It’s heartwarming seeing how much ur standing up for this community. Please keep having us updated by making these videos ❤

Some of the best moments I have had in echo vr were literally sitting in the lobby and talking to people. Echo vr is more than an esport. It is a social space.

RIP Echo Vr you will be missed. 😢😭

2:58 Rrrroooooll Credits! Literally, as soon as you said that, I didn't even need to know anything else lol... and I also don't understand why companies just don't want to give people the ability to host private servers; they can have someone looking out for profits being made off that stuff (which yes, should be illegal), but there's so many games out there that people want to keep alive and CAN keep alive, but companies just don't want to share. What does it cost you? You're not supporting it anymore, give it to someone that can at least keep it going! One such game was NostosVR... terrible by some standards as a game, but I wish it was still around because it had the right idea, and nothing came close to it yet to replace it.

I love the whisper transitions, they keep me watching cuz I get distracted pretty easily

@thrillseeker whatever happens I want you to know, you are doing your duty as a vr ambassador. And thanks for that. Good job thrill. Keep up the fight. We need you

Thank you again! I hope Meta comes around. You are the voice we needed for this! They should really be embarrassed. And I hope we can find a work around if they are too blinded by the money chase that they cant be embarrassed. How can the not understand that creating a virtual social arena will be used and loved by the people in the community who use that arena. We should all be worried about what they plan to end on a whim in the future. Do better meta.

I have basically never played Echo, but I have hundreds of hours on Lone Echo 1 and 2, and combining that with the fact that this game is such a big part of the community, seeing this all happen still hurts me so much and I just can't even imagine how much it would hurt an active Echo player. The fact that Meta can just take away what I would argue is one of it's biggest games like this and Provide no way for it's community to continue it just shows that if they really want to, they could probably do this again, and probably WILL do this again. We need to stop this from happening, but from what it seems, there almost is no way to stop it.

Meta when they find out people aren't gonna watch a billion ads: 👁💧👄💧👁

Thank you for all the efforts youve put in to save this game and possibly future games. This game as been part of my teenage years. I started playing when i was 15 and now im 18. Im so sad seeing this.

Thank you for making these. Utterly puzzling that they'd kill this game, citing these reasons. Like you said, aside from cosmetics there really haven't been any major changes to this game since i started playing 2 years ago. I don't buy the "human capital" line one bit. Either this is a poorly contrived publicity stunt for Echo VR 2 , one of those weird legal issues we don't know about or just another case of a career corporate fool not knowing their target audience. Fortunately it looks like the VR community (not just the Echo VR community) isn't taking it lightly. Thanks again, Thrill!

Meta could single handedly destroy VR this way.. If they keep going in this direction it will eventually blow up, and consumers that aren't into VR yet, will start to avoid it all together. I'm really hoping something will change soon..

This situation is going to make it hard to buy a quest 3 for me personally

DO NOT STOP! These 2 videos you made on this have been your BEST ONES! This is A V E R Y B I G I S S U E! And a great opportunity to crash this "company" completely and be done with it. No other VR related company is this "evil" and yeah it would be a big HIT loosing Oculus, but we need to cut our losses for VR be the landslide it is gearing up to be this year!

Meta: Wanna see me make the dumbest decision a company can make? Meta: Wanna see me do it again?

Echo VR was the first game I played, and I have loved it since. My friends and I play together almost everyday, and seeing people in the lobbies together talking about the shutdown feels horrible. I know we have months until this doomsday, but I feel like the game is already ripped from our hands.

Thank you Thrill, for both being one of the major voices in this shift and providing real solutions to save our beloved Echo. ❤

While I didn't actually play that much compared to other vr games, I am so sad about the news. The game just felt so good and fun to play, and if I had more of a drive to play it, I would have loved to. The fact that now it's too late to do that hits different.

outro song? description link broke

Here's Three Easy Update Ideas for Echo: - Add Combat to Quest Version - Obstacle Courses / Races - Add a Tag Game Mode

You are one of the content creators that got me interested in VR. Your love for lone echo got me in the door and after experiencing the magic of echo arena I have upgraded my VR systems with the first thought of “how will this impact my echo play”. The people I’ve met through echo (many commenting here) have enriched my life and not being able to play the team oriented VR esport with them is gut wrenching. I’ve been playing with them for >3 years now and haven’t missed a season. Thank you for helping to magnify the communities voice.

The fact that he says the userbase is so "little" is ironic considering the amount of power, and therfore cost to run the game for these players is no doubt very minimal in comparison to the rest of their operations. So this is nothing but a crule joke. Valve and all the other companies that still run their games to this day, have shown us they have next to no excuse for this. They are beating around the bush on the fact that they don't give a crap about anyone or anything other than their own corporate agenda. They just gobble up every business and s@#t em out, destroying an entire industry, but be honest, we all knew this was coming..

I hear those Lain references, Thrill. Very cool. We're getting closer to the Wired every day.

Thanks for keeping us updated Thrill!

This is a real shame. This was one of the first VR games I played and it REALLY wowed me

Great video!!!! So happy to have someone speaking for us! I agree with EVERYTHING!!!!! so happy there is hope!

I totally get your position here and agree to most, but I think (don't know anything for sure) that there will soon be big competitors to Meta, which will either force Meta to be more competitive or fade to the background, which I doubt they'd do, but win-win?

I can feel the way the wind's blowing. I'm buying the XR Elite when that launches and getting out of this echosystem. It'll suck losing the Oculus exclusives but I mostly do VRChat anyway.

Thank you for everything you’re doing for our community. This community is so much more than just a game to us, we’ve started businesses, leagues, organisations, we’ve made lifelong friendships, to a lot of us Echo came into our lives years ago at a time where some of us weren’t in amazing positions or backgrounds and Echo to a lot of us has pulled us out. There’s people who have lost loved ones that they used to play this game with on the daily and now Echo is used to remember them. To lose Echo, we’re losing so much more than just a game, we may be small, but we’ll never be dwindling. Thank you for everything you’re doing ThrillSeeker

Let’s nuke the user base, everyone who can play the game, GET ON. Show them we care. ❤

How do you fix stick drift for oculus 2

Echo combat being missing from the quest version is what made me quit a while back. Its the game mode that I enjoyed most. Meta out here ruining shit, big surprise.

Please keep us update with the echo story!!!! You’re one of the only person/channel outside of the community talking about us!

Im not sure the new ceo knows how to do his job

I didn't play echo, really. I played it once a long time ago, but seeing the effect this has on the community and hearing about all these stories breaks my heart. I play beat saber quite a bit and would be sad to see it go. This pales in comparison, though, because there's not such of a community aspect to it. Echo VR is like no other game in so many ways, and lifelong friendships have been formed through it. Not only will the current playerbase be devastated, but future bonds and joy that would originate from this game is being practically eliminated. Even if an exact replica is made and posted on servers for everyone, the amount of active players will never be the same. Plus, Meta has so many people against it already the backlash from this game would most likely blend into the masses. They effectively control VR and the future of VR. It's unfair. I am sorry to anyone in the community who has been impacted by this. Meta shows us once again how crappy it and the future can be.

I’ve had this game for not long now, about a week, but I don’t want to see it go down like this as this game is really awesome, I play it almost every day now. Thank you for continuing to support this matter even though your not part of the community, we really appreciate it :)