Polyarc, the Seattle-based VR gaming developer behind the award-winning Moss series, announced that it’s had to “significantly reduce the size of the company.”
The announcement, via LinkedIn on Monday, notes that the layoffs come after “an unsuccessful team-wide effort to secure funding following the cancellation of a major project.”
The company, which had around 52 employees according to LinkedIn, did not specify how many were affected, but said it plans to share a spreadsheet with information about those who were impacted to help them make connections in new job searches.
Polyarc was founded in 2016 by Tam Armstrong, Danny Bulla, and Chris Alderson, all three of whom had formerly worked on Destiny at Bungie. The studio’s debut project, the fantasy adventure Moss, came out in 2018 to critical and commercial success, which led to both a 2021 sequel and a multiplayer spinoff in 2023.
The Moss series, which began as exclusives for the PlayStation VR platform before going multiplatform, is on the short list of candidates for VR gaming’s “killer app.” In Moss, players take the role of a Reader, an unseen individual who discovers a magical book in a forgotten library. That book allows you to watch and affect events in the fantasy world of Moss, where a young mouse named Quill is on a quest to save her kingdom.
The problem for the VR market, however, is that much of it is driven by Meta, and Meta has been steadily stepping back from its VR endeavors for the better part of the last couple of years. In January, another wave of VR layoffs at Meta closed several studios and dramatically lowered the headcount at Bellevue, Wash.-based Camouflaj.
There are still major players in VR gaming, such as Valve and its upcoming Steam Frame. It’d be a mistake to say the sector is dead or dying, but Meta drove so much of the conversation around VR that its slow abandonment has destabilized the format.
In addition, the last three years have been a tough time to work in the video game industry, as numerous companies have been forced to slim or shut down. Other recently affected studios in the Pacific Northwest include Phoenix Labs, Monolith Productions, and Rec Room.
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