We can’t let Meta get away with this. 

PART TWO TO THIS VIDEO IS UP: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aj6UWDMRX54.html EDIT: We just got more information on this- Boz posted an AMA and well.. the first few words of this video ring truer than ever. We can actually make a change here. If we give Meta this inch they will certainly take a mile in the future. This is not cool. #saveEcho Follow the movement on twitter and on discord: twitter.com/Thrilluwu Discord.gg/Thrill

As a major Echo community organizer, I could not be more gutted. We were told that new content was on the way while planning LANs and Pro leagues. No warning, no communication, no future. No more Echo. Meta talks about building communities in horizons while singlehandedly wiping out one of the oldest and biggest VR communities to date.

I don't feel the urge to post on stories almost at all. But no gamer should stand for this, ThrillSeeker thank you for making these kinds of videos. I don't always have the time to keep my ears to the ground on VR news. I've been fallowing it for a long time though since 2012 with the first kickstarter. VR is a personal passion of mine and seeing the community grow to the point it's at, it's so beautiful and is exactly what I dreamed of! Hearing that people will lose basically a part of their homes is truly heartbreaking. I hope they really reconsider.

This was heartbreaking news. My first VR addiction was Echo Arena.... so many friends, so many experiences... it's just heartbreaking.

Wow, I never expected our hopes to reach such a front-page level of media....thank you for your help, those of us who love Echo are forever thankful.

Please stay on this story Thrill. You are one of the few people that can help stop this insanity. Echo was my first love in VR, the only other game I play is Population:One.. Also owned by Meta, and probably the next to go.. We need to stand up to Meta and let them know this is not ok!

As a pro who has spent the past 5 years grinding this game, this was one of the most heartbreaking things that have ever happened to me. To make it worse in a private discord where the higher level players talk to the devs directly they claimed to have a roadmap out by the end of January. The roadmap turned out to be them announcing the shutdown. Ready At Dawn will have a very hard time building another community after this disaster. Thank you for all you do thrill.

As someone who’s been in the Combat community for the past 2 years. We expected this but we didn’t expect Arena to be brought down with it. The Combat community is already banding together and currently on standby for about a month to see Metas response before banding together and remaking what was taken from us.

#SaveEchoVR Thank you for the post and bringing awareness to this issue

Everyone, sign the online petition. We have the community numbers to at least put this on the radar. It takes 1 minute and if we all do it we might just save the game, its a small hope but a hope nonetheless.

Love these stream of conscious videos on this happening in VR. I operate a vr education company and find your perspective on what’s happening in VR unique, ahead of the curve, and honest. Thanks!

As an official tournament organizer at another large vr game (gym class vr) we have used echovr’s success in esports as a template for what we need to be focusing on and I think this game shutting down will set back the vr esports field back, potentially multiple years

thank you so much for covering this, it means a lot to the community. we cannot let such a unique game die

The amount of time I, and so many others have invested in this game makes it genuinely heartbreaking how fast this decision seemed to be made. This was the game that got me to put on my headset every day, and I probably wouldn't even be so deep into vr if it wasn't for this game's incredible community.

Thanks so much for posting about this. I have 4k+ games played on Echo, and would prefer if it didn't get shut down, so appreciate you raising awareness.

This game and community has changed my life. That is a statement said with 100% honesty from the heart. I have met people in this community that have helped me grow as a person and the healthy combat and competition definitely made a positive impact on my mental health. To see this happening with no warning or notice hits me in the heart and hurts more than I can describe. Reading the official update on the future of Echo VR legitimately made me tear up and start to cry a bit. Having all the amazing memories and experiences run through my head like a movie reel puts a pit in my stomach that may never go away. I truly truly hope for a better alternative to this heartbreaking future we have been given. Myself, along with everyone who has played this game and been a rock solid part of this community, are hurting... And we will never forget this. And we will never forgive. #saveEcho

Echo was the only game that kept bringing me back to VR, and this hurt rly badly. I don’t even know if I will be coming back to VR as often as I do knowing I won’t be able to play space basketball with the friends I made in echo

It's nice seeing so many creators fighting against this, this cannot happen!

Thank you ThrillSeeker, i spent almost 5 years of my life on this game and it almost feels like a breakup. Thank you for sharing this with your community and giving us a little hope. Also love your videos.

Would love for this to be a story of fans beating the odds. #saveecho! Also would love to see you talk about PSVR2 now that we’re seeing it’s got something special!

Many have already said how I feel about this very sad news, about my favourite vr game since I started in vr 2017. Just wanted to say thank you for the coverage for us. You're a legend.

I make content primarily on echo vr. Some of the creators here are the best people I’ve ever met. Thank you for bringing this to the masses attention thrill. Much love❤

The worst part is that the reach of this particular issue extends to VR as a platform. This decision can - and likely will - turn new VR users away from the market, and existing VR users may abandon Meta products entirely to avoid getting spat on again. I simply cannot fathom how Meta (or Ready at Dawn) believe that butchering active communities and products will INCREASE their revenue in the long run. We need a strong competitor for Meta's VR lineup, and we need it FAST because it feels like Meta's about to burn itself alive and take the VR industry's reputation with it.

Bringing food to your desk, opening youtube and immediately seeing a ThrillSeeker video "42 seconds ago" is the best timing ever

First multi-player vr game I played, and even cared about it, never spent much time on it, but I fondly recall meeting a retired guy who took a liking to Mt a showed me a place to clip through the map, still one of my fondest community finds ever

Thanks for this Thrill, knew we could count on you! Certainly hoping the petition works, it has before...

As a Master player for VRML and a professional player for NEPA this hit unbelievably hard. I’ve been playing this game for 4+ years with over 7,000 hours of play. I’ve made some of my best friends and joined a strong community. To see this game shut down with big LANs coming up and a whole future ahead of us it was heartbreaking. Thank you for covering this devastating topic ThrillSeeker!

Thanks for covering this Thrill! Wild seeing my face in one of your vids. 😅 This one got me tearing up. Means a lot to the Echo community!

i have over 700 hours in this game. it is easily my favorite game in vr, and maybe ever. i’ve met so many amazing people and had so much fun playing it nearly every week for 3 years. this is such a sad thing happening, and i really hope we can convince meta to change their decision.

I love this guy's passion. He knows & he cares, while it may not be as much as the rest of us who've spent years here, including myself, it means so much to see someone so diligent & understanding of the place we've grown and built so much out of. Learning that they took this home outside of our reality away from us for a game inhabited by children who migrate game to game, platform to platform without the connection as big as echo, it hurts and it feels horrible. Thank you thrill, & everyone have a lovely day

This is also a good lesson/reminder for people that everything digital is impermanent. This is why I don't like using streaming services for music and instead choose to build my own music library.

This game and the people in it is the only reason I’ve bought the 4 vr headsets I own today, and it became a massive part of my life. Heartbreaking news to hear and really feels like it’s come out of nowhere.

Echo has been one of the most life changing experiences of my life, and this announcement was heartbreaking.

As a high level player for this game this a huge slap in the face. Most of us have been around for 3+ years with thousands of hours on the game. Ready At Dawn has promised us so much since meta bought echo. Some of these things being fixing the infamous broken q2 throwing (as a result the entire high level community is still forced to play on the rift almost 6 years after its release), server issues, QOL stuff, and small basic features that we've been promised. For the last two+ years they released no in game bugfixes, (unless the bugs made the game fully unplayable) only working on their echo pass to milk the communities money before they announced their plan to cut off the servers. As a result from this, Ready at Dawn made a private discord server that was said to help high level players give feedback on private test builds and on bugs. The server instead has just been used as a void for high level players to complain in instead of doing it in their main discord servers, which developers have not responded to about these big issues for years. Making moves like this makes no sense when they wont even put effort on their end to help the community grow. Thank god for Meta and Ready at Dawn

Ow..... That was one of my first VR titles I owned. I havn't played it in forever, but sad to see it go.... Echo Combat was my favorite, disk battle was quickly tiring. F to pay respects to a legendary title

Thank you so much for making this video, as a pro echo player it rips at my heart to see it's going to die. We as a community are going to fight like hell for this, if we let them do this to Echo they'll do it to many more games!

You put all my feelings into words with this video. I've been playing echo since 2019 and this news was devastating, I've talked to many people in game and most of them say that echo is the game that makes VR worth it for them. Sucks to see this happen but at least now I have a reason to completely ditch meta for good now.

Seeing so many people coming together as a community just to try to stop this is amazing to see, Echo will always be one of my favorite/first games, i couldn’t imagine it gone, hopefully something is done in time

I have put thousands of hours into this game. It is an absolute that this game shall stand. I thank you for your efforts in the vid. #SaveEchoVR

Thanks for covering this Thrill, Echo has been a big part of my life since summer 2020.

Echo is basically the only game i play on my quest 2, been playing on and off for like a year and a half or something like that, the community is thriving and you constantly see new players in the lobbies, and it will probably keep bringing in new players since its such a unique game and the only one of its kind really, this is a very bad move on meta's half. #saveEcho

echo VR is the only reason I own a headset. I like beat saber and pop one, but without echo I’d return my VR headsets. the executives who made this decision probably have never touched the game and have no idea just how great the game actually is

Thank you so much for bringing light to this. We greatly appreciate this as a community.

as someone whos played for years and spent thousands of hoursin arena/combat , its nice to see so many of my friends in this comment section and thank you, youre the person who needed to make this video. thank you thrillseeker for this, im at tears seeing the community get the attention it deserves from arguably one of the largest speaking figures of vr, the pressure this is putting on trumps any effort that we have been able to put together and hopefully some form of the game can continue, we are heartbroken and honestly shock stricken that a huge part of our lives is being stripped in months, im lucky enough to still be able toplay quite alot( probly too much lol) and while thankful one of my teamates put it right after news broke, every pub is like going to a party where everyone has stage 4 cancer and no one wants to think about it. we are being left with no alternative and RAD staff have said they wont give server software/peer to peer functionality due to "security". hopefully things change, hopefully we can keep somthing. thank you for this video, im so exited to see one of my fav creators speak out about this, my friends and i thank you deeply.

Games going away with no explanation happens all the time and it truly is sad. Hopefully they will work something out. First Altspace VR now Echo also? I mean what the Hell! Games I miss that are not longer with u Brawl Busters, Exteel Mech Game, Hawken PC version.

Not the 1st time meta has done something like this. Shortly after Facebook acquired oculus they deleted and removed all DK2 content without warning. This meant if you only hosted your DK2 content on the oculus site it was gone. And it was fast 2016 just before the 1st rift headset came out. It wasn't hurting anything just being an archive. Why wouldn't you at least E-mail your oculus account users before removing it there content.

thanks for covering this thrill as a long time viewer and fan but also high tier echo player it means alot to have a little hope restored by being featured on such a big platform as your channel

If your theory is right then I would blame Meta for letting the company get to that state, people only leave jobs they are so passionate about because they get the life sucked out of them by the company they work for.

Absolutely on point commentary Thrillseeker! EchoVR is the poster child for VR esports, beyond even Meta. Huge IP to just throw in the trash

This game got me through Coved and saved my mental health, this is devastating.

Man, I remember playing Echo before all the battle pass stuff was introduced. It was so fun finding all the Easter eggs in the lobby and socializing with people, glitching out of the map and in general just having fun it's a shame that's going away... even though I never played the e-sport half much it gave me a lot of good memories

YESSSS Thrill!! Hyped to have you on board. As someone who loves this game and it's playerbase, I'm glad we're getting some huge names talking about it.

as someone whos played this game competitively for over 3 years, gone to multiple lans and made lifelong friends, this is just sad that a company would do this to such a big and thriving community. Huge L for the whole of vr

Thanks a lot Thrill, I’ve been playing this game for about 5 years of my life and it really has changed me in the best way possible. I met so many close friends that I hope I can keep in my life forever. Thanks for giving us a little hope, this just feels awful. Keep up the great work!

I only played the game for a bit but it’s still sad to hear that such a massive community of lovely people will possibly loose said platform! #saveEcho

Echo has been the only game I’ve played obsessively in VR since starting in 2020. It has the best community of any game I’ve ever been involved in. It also has loads of ultra smart people but meta has been ruining the game for about a year with lame cosmetic updates and nothing else. They need to make everything open source and let the community run with it. It will see more improvement and innovation than ever. It’s always had so much more potential than meta seemed to see. It’s the only game you can consistently play multiplayer on its. So wild they would even consider this. When I first played this game it felt like the future of SPORTS not just esports. This is what people will be watching in 5-10yrs MORE than basketball or football, soccer etc. people are already working on clones as of day 1 of the announcement so either meta finds the devs needed to continue this or they’ll miss out on the most revolutionary VR Esports game ever . Can meta do anything right at this point?

Thanks for the video thrill. Still shocking to see the game I’ve met some of my favorite people through shut down. Honestly not super confident about anything changing but thank you.

Thrill, you are a legend. Whatever you come up with for this channel, I am confident it will be amazing.

The amount of time I've spent in Echo VR not only practicing for VRML but playing with friends, I will lose connection with so many of my friends due to this. I am a developer myself not a developer for RAD but I am a developer and I know how long and how much time was put spent and put into this game, not only is was this the biggest game in the VR industry, but it was a home to thousands of people and for them to just give us those news without any real explanation besides making a new game, is really messed up and will make many members of their community lose trust in them as they spent time and dedication in that game to be the best they can at it and make new friends. Having to find a new favorite VR game is very hard as there isn't that many to choose from and only about 5-10% of VR games are free to play. This isn't okay and I hate to see that the end of Echo is near, I hope all of you spend your time with Echo as much as possible before it leaves us, create all the memories you can with echo before it's to late. I wish you all luck on finding a new favorite game on VR and I hope you all wipe those tears on the final day as you probably won't stop crying for awhile.

Its great to be informed on new events in the VR industry. Especially for Echo VR which was the first VR game i got addicted to when i first got into vr. Thanks for keeping me in the know Thrill. Much love. 😄

I spent 24 hours in Echo VR on 10 tabs of acid and honestly had more fun just chilling around in the hub not even playing the game than any other game on VR, something bout the physics and content. It could of still been expanded to be more of a social experience with things like chess and mini games to attract more casual players as it’s just vibey af to fly around and throw discs and I’m not always down to break a sweat.

“Hmmmm… the playerbase is diminishing on one of our largest multiplayer titles… should we invest into it more?” “…nah kill it lmao 😂”

This is just plain wrong on Meta’s side. If this really IS Meta pulling strings on this, what’s keeping them from shutting down other communities in other games? We MUST find a way to stop Meta and their hell-like parade, in which thank you very much Thrill for making these videos. Inspires the VR community to stand up for themselves ❤

I'm not someone who plays echo VR a lot but I used to be but I'm still gutted to hear this because I met my 2 best friends on echo VR and I know that so many people can relate. I hope we save echo VR

While Tuesday news day is useful, I think your passion shows much more in videos like this Great work!

Love hearing you get super passionate about stuff like this!

Thank you Thrill for bringing light to this topic, let's hope something can be done before it's too late!

Thank you for covering this man, everyone is gutted by the news, we can use all the eyes we can get on this

Thank you so much for bringing light to this insanity. I cannot believe they would think of trying to kill Echo when it has brought so many people to the vr and made us very excited for the future of it

And old design professor of mine often talked about these problems as isues that arise when companies like Facebook, google, and adobe hold a monopoly over their product. They solely focus on monetization and turn to what makes the most money, subscriptions and raising prices. Personally think it is our job as the consumer to take a stand and do things like cancel Netflix when they get out of line

It's cool to see some of my footage in here! This is really sad and came out of nowhere. All we can hope is the new rad game will be better. #saveecho

Over the past 2 and a half years I have had the most fun and met the best friends I have ever had. It hurts to see that a game with a great future with a growing player base. Echo had a great community aspect (with to be fair a lot of exceptions, a lot due to the lack of dev support) that helped me through some tough times as well as through my friends roughest moments. Seeing all of that just, slowly disappearing especially after all the work I put in to be at the top just sucks. I hope this all ends out well but with RAD’s history I severely doubt it.

This was so well made in such little time. I take my hat off to you thrill. If anything will make a difference then This will

Getting strong "bring out your dead" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail vibes from this story. "I'm not dead!" "Well, he will be soon. He's very ill." "I'm getting better!" "No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment."

Hi, just wanted to say thank you so much for covering this, I play Echo in VRML and have done for a year now, and have been playing Echo Arena VR itself for well over 2 years, made some of the best memories and friends of my life that at this point are a second family to me, the fight for echo has got to continue and I'm incredibly happy and proud that a major content creator is bringing this to some attention and calling Meta out on the stunt they are pulling, thank you again and #saveEcho

After playing this game for 5 years, playing on every headset, going to lan tournaments, pouring thousands upon thousands of hours into this game it’s truly saddening to see a company do something like this. This is the best vr esport out there by far right now, one of the biggest vr communities, etc. just poof no more. Thank you for what you do thriller and bringing peoples attention to this.

#saveechovr thank you thrillseeker you are incredible. This has been my home for 2 years now. I really hope this gets somewhere

Thank you for posting it. The Community appreciates it a ton. this game isnt just a game... Its like a second home, friends, fun, hours and hours of gameplay... all down the drain, and for what?

That tiny scene from Lain triggered something in me. Now I need to watch Serial Experiments Lain again!

OMG MORE VIRTUALLY ODD YES PLEASE!!! those are some of my favorite videos you have done sir I can't wait for more! woot that one line at the end really got me hyped af! Also i love this style of video too being based on current events but having a deeper look at the bigger picture is a wonderful format and very informative. Kudos and thanks for all you do my guy.

Me and my bestfriend play echo VR all the time, and me and him both agree that this game, is amazing. So many different things can happen in the game. This game is so fun and brought us so many fun, hard, challenging moments. Such a shame.

Meta tries to become VR and just ends up smothering it with a pillow made up of money thanks mark what an innovative genius you are !

One of my 1st multiplayer experiences was in the lobby of echo VR, 5 of us waiting for a game end up getting in a deep chat about life the universe and everything, it was so niche back in 2017 you had a lot I common with someone just by owning VR.. Then one of the players told me how awesome it it to meet people and interact without them seeing his disability and move around in zero gravity, he had been in a wheel chair his whole life. Even today echo VR feels amazing, great mechanics, Lone echo was beyond ground breaking. It was a slice of the future experienced in the past. I was gutted when space junkies died, oe of the few games I was really good at, Such a shame

i am here for news, info and updates. the format that it gets delivered doesnt matter much to me as long as i can still easily stay up to date with vr thru the channel

I bought a quest 2 back just after the covid shut down. While I found many games to be enjoyable, nothing really had the replay value like Echo VR did. It not only caught my attention, but it kept me coming back for years, at times spending 8 hours a day only playing Echo. This community is how I have made a majority of my friends, and without Echo VR I wouldn't be who I am today. Echo changed my life for the better, and I even decided to go into VR game development as a career because of it. It's truly saddening to me that after August I won't be able to casually hop on Echo to play with my closest friends. I hope Meta will see how much this game means to so many people and the community that supports it. As one of the biggest VR esports out there, it makes no sense to me that it's not worth Meta's time to keep it running and keep these thousands of people coming back to their game. Much love to Ready At Dawn for creating this amazing game and keeping it going as long as they did. Sometimes it's hard for big companies like Meta to realize how amazing and incredible this game that RAD created truly is.

This video started to make me tear up😢.This community is strong and I hope it doesn’t go away. #SaveEchoVR

I have played this game for 4 years continuously. Dumped hours on hours on hours of my time competing at the highest level of VRML and NEPA and creating content to promote the game. It boggles my mind that Meta and RAD can take something like this away just like that.

The lone echo series was crazy good. First game to almost make me cry

It’s sad to see a game go especially one like this even though I’ve never played the game These communities that are built from it are amazing and so let’s hope someone makes a spiritual successor.

I love how you can buy something and then it can just suddenly stop working because an exec in an office said so.

This game has made some people's life's so beautiful, mine included, I'm devastated to see it go

Meta needs to release a statement on this BS

i really did like this focus on something big, it means you can spend more time on it and it emphasises the message a lot more. as for echo vr, its something i never played. but i'm sorry to all those who have lost the amazing community

I had moved about a year ago, and during the move my original quest 2 was broken, and i didnt have thr money to fix or buy a new one at the time. About a week ago, I got a small bonus at work and decided to spend it on a new quest 2. I signed my account, downloaded all my games, and went to bed, excited for the next day to play all of my favorite vr games that i had missed. I woke up, moved my furniture around tk have enough space, and got on to my favorite vr game, echo arena. The music played, my child like excitement ready to head to the center to que up a new match. Then.. "Echo VR servers are offline. Thankyou for playing". I didnt think it was real. I reloaded the game to have the same heartbreaking message. I went to the game reviews and had learned the sad truth. I took off my headset and sat down, litteral tears down my face as I kept looking at video after article. I messaged a few friends that I used to play with, and they said they didnt even want to play on their VR set anymore. This, hurts so much. Friends that I had made, memories ill never get back, ill miss this game.

I had a friend who was in the pro side of Echo and I used to watch his games and go on call with him during practice. His teammates became close friends and even invited me to get in and play with them. I have an index tho so I literally had to use 2 launchers at the same time to get it running and even then it wasn’t perfect. I’m really sad to see this go up in flames. Those guys are so dedicated and passionate about this game 😭

couldnt have said it better myself, thank you thrill for speaking for the community!

Thank you for bringing more light to this

And people seriously argued that "Meta should have just bought VRChat instead of trying to make thier own metaverse". Corporate buyouts are pretty much never a good thing for the consumers. It doesn't need to lose money, giving it the axe just needs to make one penny more than keeping it up and they will kill whatever company/game/property they purchased so that it looks good on some exec's Excel spreadsheet.

that reminds me of "Elite Dangerous" by far the most underrated VR title with immersion beyond anything in the genre, the developing company released a terrible DLC just to make shareholders happy, cutting VR out in DLC elements the process, stepping back instead of forward, but in this case the shareholders semd to have noticed.

Getting the Lynx R1 just got a heck more tempting.