Tomorrow, Meta and Ready at Dawn are shutting down Echo VR, the free-to-play game that helped pioneer VR sports. Get in now before they pull the plug.
Meta made no secret it was shutting down the zero-gravity sport Echo VR and its PC-only squad shooter variant, Echo Combat, having announced earlier this year it was sunsetting the games come August 1st at 10 AM PT (local time here). That means fans only have a few hours left to play before the multiplayer-only games are unceremoniously disconnected from Meta’s servers.
Echo VR fans didn’t go down without a fight though. Some spirited protests against the shutdown even included a dedicated fan group flying an airplane-towed message over Meta’s HQ in Menlo Park back in March, stating “ZUCK, DON’T KILL VR ESPORTS FIGHTFORECHO.COM”. Both online and offline protests fell on deaf ears though. The URL mentioned above now leads to a 404, and it’s pretty clear by now that Meta didn’t change their collective minds.
The studio recently released the Echo VR OST on YouTube, which feels like small recompense for killing consistently one of the best-rated and most popular free titles on Quest. Ready at Dawn, which was acquired by Meta in 2020, explained earlier this year the shutdown was made for “many good reasons [,] chief among them is the studio coming together to focus on our next project.”
Both Ready at Dawn and Onward studio Downpour Interactive found themselves caught up in one of the multiple rounds of layoffs to hit Meta earlier this year. To boot, Ready at Dawn has yet to reveal what’s next. Whatever it is though, we’re hoping it has many of the same hard-won learnings baked in, like Echo VR and its narrative games Lone Echo did. In the meantime, check out the OST playlist below.
Echo VR’s days are numbered, as Meta announced earlier this year it would soon be pulling the plug on one of its most successful games on Quest. But hardcore players of zero-G sports game Echo VR and its shooter variant Echo Combat aren’t going down without a fight.
Organizers behind a protest group called ‘The Fight For Echo’ are looking to keep their favorite game alive, and they’re apparently ready to take drastic measures.
On Wednesday, March 1st, the group commissioned an airplane-towed message to fly over Meta’s HQ in Menlo Park, California, which then circled the heart of Silicon Valley for over three hours for all to see. The message was directed at Meta founder & CEO Mark ‘Zuck’ Zuckerberg, stating: “ZUCK, DON’T KILL VR ESPORTS FIGHTFORECHO.COM”
You can see the plane in action, courtesy of a YouTube livestream by ‘rev2600’, one such dedicated Echo VR player:
While we are extremely passionate about these games and are very supportive of the team at Ready at Dawn and the Echo Games franchise on the whole, we think we can still help Meta and Ready at Dawn by continuing to be the testing ground and supportive community we always have been and provide a place where larger ideas for other VR games can be tested.
We cannot do that however without some kind of game server being provided to the community to host ourselves, or minimal infrastructure to play on and the permission to work with the people required to do it.
We understand that there is a future direction being taken; and that it is tied to regulations and compliance, and our intention is not to hold anything back. We only wish to continue to do what we’ve always done and be the ambassadors of VR that you want us to be.
At the time, the studio said the decision to shut down the game “was made for many good reasons and chief among them is the studio coming together to focus on our next project.”
Undeterred by the airplane-towed plea, Meta sent out the following message to Echo VR players last night:
We are reaching out to let you know that Echo VR servers will shut down on August 1st, 2023 – 10:30 AM Pacific. On this date, both Echo VR and Echo Combat will no longer be playable.
Add-ons are no longer available for purchase in the Quest store. Echo Points are no longer available for purchase in the Echo Shop. Any Echo Points currently in your account can be used until August 1st, 2023 – 10:30 AM Pacific, with items heavily discounted in the Echo Shop.
While a reversal of the shutdown seems less likely now that Ready at Dawn has completely neutered the free-to-play game’s in-game currency, the founders behind ‘The Fight For Echo’ initiative have setup a change.org petition so others can show their support. At the time of this writing over 25,000 people have signed.
Dedicated online multiplayer Echo VR has always been free for Oculus Quest and Rift owners, so in a bid to help monetise the videogame Ready at Dawn will be launching a new seasonal event pass called Echo Pass.
Much like other free-to-play videogames, the seasonal Echo Pass will only offer players cosmetic rewards. No reward will provide an in-game advantage of any sort. There will be a free version with 10 rewards to unlock, whilst the Premium version will let players access a further 50 items. To earn them all they need to do is play matches.
The Premium pass will retail for 1000 Echo Points ($9.99 USD), purchased in-game or through Oculus DLC. After they’ve bought the Premium Echo Pass players can choose to purchase further tiers costing 200 Echo Points each if they don’t have time to earn the necessary Tier Experience Points (TXP). It’s unclear how long the season will last and therefore the effort required to unlock everything without paying.
Ready at Dawn notes that it has overhauled the in-game customization system enabling players to get more creative. When it comes to body customizations the: “Chassis is no longer restricted by game mode and can be used everywhere,” whilst the new Boosters and Bracers offer more visual options.
Another new form of customization is Heraldry. Banners, Tags, Emblems, Patterns and Tints, Medals, and Titles give players further chance to stand out from the crowd.
Before all of this is rolled out Ready at Dawn has opened a limited Private Test Server (PTS) this week to test features and collect community feedback. The studio recommends players use an Oculus Quest 2 for the PTS as Rift and original Quest players may experience performance issues.
Ready At Dawn provided an update on a potential Echo Combat port for Oculus Quest, and it’s bad news for anyone who was holding out hope.
Echo Arena launched on Oculus Quest in open beta earlier this year, and moved out of beta into full release last week. Back in May, Ready At Dawn held a poll on its Discord server to gauge interest in bringing Echo Combat over to the Quest as well, but it now looks like that definitely won’t be happening.
Given the recent release of Echo Arena on Quest, Facebook-owned Ready At Dawn provided fans with an update on the potential of Echo Combat coming to the standalone headset:
To put it simply, we are not working on bringing Echo Combat to Quest. If there are any changes in the future, we’ll let you know at that time.
So what are we working on? Right now we’re focused on new features and tools for Echo VR, some of which have been in the works for a while whereas others are newer but vital to ensuring the game is fun and welcoming for all Echo Units.
Ready At Dawn encourages players with a VR-ready PC to enjoy Echo Combat on Quest using Oculus Link, but that’s obviously no consolation to those who only own the Quest and were holding out for a standalone port.
On the other side of the VR pond, PC VR players are still holding out for any news on Lone Echo II, the bigger, longer and more involved sequel to Ready At Dawn’s Lone Echo from 2017. The sequel was scheduled for an early 2020 release as of last year, but we’ve not heard anything for a while. We’ll keep our eyes on Facebook Connect coming next week for any updates.
If you were hoping for the Rift-exclusive team shooter Echo Combat (2018) to eventually make its way to Quest after developers Ready at Dawn ported the zero-G sports game Echo VR, you’d better not hold your breath.
“To put it simply, we are not working on bringing Echo Combat to Quest. If there are any changes in the future, we’ll let you know at that time,” the studio says in a recent update.
Granted, you can play Echo Combat on Quest provided you have a Link cable and VR-ready PC, but that’s little solace to Quest users stuck behind the invisible wall as their fellow competitors on Rift fly off to gear up for team shooting action.
“Right now we’re focused on new features and tools for Echo VR, some of which have been in the works for a while whereas others are newer but vital to ensuring the game is fun and welcoming for all Echo Units,” the studio concludes.
While the game’s sportier half is free on both Quest and Rift, Echo Combat is a paid game on Rift, priced at $10 as an in-app purchase. It’s possible Ready at Dawn simply can’t dedicate the time to the lengthy beta testing that it did with Echo VR on Quest; the company’s sequel to Lone Echo (2017) has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which may explain some of their reasoning behind the lack of Echo Combat on Quest.
Check out the trailer below to see some of the objective-based 4v4 shooting action you’re missing out on:
Competitive multiplayer game Echo VR has left open beta and is now available for free on Oculus Quest.
In Echo VR, you play in a zero-gravity room with a single disc in the middle. There are two teams, and the aim is to push and boost yourself through the floaty environment to grab the disc and fling it into the goal. It’s a simple concept but one that could only work in VR. The game has been a multiplayer staple since it first launched for the Oculus Rift.
After a long wait, Echo VR released an open beta for Oculus Quest earlier this year. Now, after a few months of testing and minor adjustments, the game moves out of beta and into full release on the Oculus Quest store.
Despite leaving beta, if you’ve already tried the game you probably won’t notice any huge changes. In an interview with Facebook, Ready at Dawn Studios said that the beta helped them “scale to support the continued growth of the community” from the Quest launch, plus make a few tweaks to the social features as well.
“Before Quest, our players have been a dedicated core group that started on the Rift three years ago and have evolved with the game as we released updates,” said Ready at Dawn producer Johnny Wing. “The new players on Quest found it difficult to use our social controls, so in our final product, we made it easier for individuals to use our social controls like muting and ghosting. We also introduced new default social settings that help players determine how interactive they want to be with others in the lobby.”
Last month, we named Echo VR the best multiplayer experience available in Quest, so it’s exciting to see it finally move into full release.
Have you tried Echo VR on Quest yet? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Julian Apellanes was never comfortable going out of his house and although he struggled with issues like anxiety and depression, he didn’t want those things to define him. In a trend noticed by others, Apellanes has discovered a new path to reality through social VR. And unsurprisingly, he has dreamed of immersive gaming since he was a child.
“I’ve been gaming all my life and I thought how cool it would be to be inside those worlds,” the 27-year-old explained to me in an interview. Once news about the original Oculus Kickstarter came along years ago, he kept up with the progress and dreamed of a day when he’d be able to immerse himself in the gaming environment rather than simply watching the action unfold on a 2D screen.
Finally, when the Oculus Rift was released in 2016, his dream became a reality, but he couldn’t have known how being immersed in virtual environments would actually give him the confidence to face more traditional social settings.
Julian Apellanes
Apellanes became interested in gaming as a very young child. Raised by his grandparents, he would watch his grandpa play games as a toddler and by the time he was seven or eight years old, he was a master himself.
“I got my online / gaming alias from my grandpa,” explained Apellanes. “He originally came up with the name ‘Palidore’ as the name of his character in the RPG classic Baldur’s Gate, in the late 90s.”
Although his early years in gaming were spent in the lap of his granddad, watching him play and occasionally being permitted to help with a click of the mouse, eventually he began creating his own saves of the game and the name Palidore stuck with him.
Throughout his childhood and teen years, Apellanes started to spend more and more time playing games. In the case of VR, however, you’re actually more present and engaged in the virtual environments, whether you’re floating above the Earth or flying through a virtual arena.
“VR kind of blended the borders between reality and virtual reality,” said Apellanes. “It gave me the first step through that door of interacting with people a lot more so although I was still indoors and interacting with people within my own house, it was very social.”
Early studies of the technology, such as one Facebook IQ commissioned with Neurons Inc in 2017, revealed that people respond positively to interactions in virtual reality. This is particularly true of introverts, who might be less self-conscious and have more confidence in a virtual environment.
Social platforms such as AltspaceVR, Bigscreen, VR Chat, and Rec Room are revolutionizing social interactions. Games with social lobbies where players can hang out, chat, and even talk about tough life issues such as dating, schoolwork, and problems at home are indicative of the fact that people are possibly more comfortable in their virtual bodies than their real ones.
“Just getting to be part of the worlds and experience a totally different reality than you’re used to,” said Apellanes, “but still in the comfort of your own home, that’s huge.”
In the summer of 2017, Apellanes began playing in the beta of Echo Arena, a built-for-VR game from Ready At Dawn that utilizes a unique form of movement as players fly, glide, and boost through a zero-gravity environment rather than walking or teleporting. The immersive feeling of the game is so convincing that players frequently report feeling a sensation of “floating” in physical reality after initially playing the game.
Soon after the game’s release, it was featured in the first season of the Oculus-sponsored, ESL-run VR League (called VR Challenger League at the time). Apellanes created a team with two friends – Kerestell “Lemming” Smith and Bryan “iShiny” McCarthy – and they proceeded to dominate the newly formed league.
Being part of a championship team boosted Apellanes’ self-esteem, but the glory of winning also came with a price. Apellanes would have to leave the comfort of his home to compete at LAN events. Initially the team competed at Oculus Connect 4 in San Jose, California and eventually they would travel to Katowice, Poland and Leicester, England.
The team roster changed a bit during seasons 2 and 3 as Simeonk21 replaced iShiny, who remained on as coach. They managed to claim the second world championship in season 2, but failed to qualify for season 3 finals.
Apellanes took it in stride. Since he couldn’t attend VR League Season 3 Grand Finals as a finalist, the young man who wouldn’t leave his room several years earlier purchased a plane ticket to Leicester, England and attended the finals as a community member.
“Everyone has a purpose in life and sometimes it takes time to find it,” stated Apellanes. “For me, getting to go into Echo and being pretty good at it, start making friends, and things like that … my personal success there made me realize I could be good at something. I discovered who I was and who I could be.”
Since he became involved with VR esports, in addition to being one of the world’s top players, Apellanes has also written articles about his experiences and he has become a caster for the Echo ArenaVR Master League (VRML). He was recently brought on as a board member for the VRML, a community-driven platform that features the most competitive VR games on the market.
“VR allowed me to kind of show myself what I was capable of,” he stated, adding that he has been “continuing the momentum since then.”
“VR has been a positive influence in many ways,” he said. “VR has helped me socially and mentally with things like anxiety and depression. It allows you to step out of your comfort zones while still being in your comfort zone. VR lets you get out without getting out.”
When people can experience environments at a self-regulated pace, it enables them to develop coping skills that they might find difficult to develop in traditional environments. Whether someone is extremely shy or they’ve experienced trauma, the ability to control the rate of exposure to an environment is vital to success.
The phenomenon of virtual reality being used as exposure therapy without actually forcing people into stress-inducing settings in physical reality hasn’t gone unnoticed by others. Even the Veterans Administration is using virtual reality to help service members deal with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through programs such as Bravemind VR Exposure Therapy.
“VR is a tech we’ve never quite seen before,” said Apellanes. “It immerses your brain in ways it doesn’t expect. Because of that, it helped me and it helps a lot of other people step out of their comfort zones and experience new things.”
These days Apellanes stays incredibly busy casting games and promoting VR esports. He keeps his eyes open for opportunities as the industry continues to grow and he explores career avenues, looking for ways he might be able to use his talents in a world where virtual and physical realities intersect.
Do you have any stories about how VR has helped you with social anxiety, depression, or something else? Let us know down in the comments below!
Julian Apellanes was never comfortable going out of his house and although he struggled with issues like anxiety and depression, he didn’t want those things to define him. In a trend noticed by others, Apellanes has discovered a new path to reality through social VR. And unsurprisingly, he has dreamed of immersive gaming since he was a child.
“I’ve been gaming all my life and I thought how cool it would be to be inside those worlds,” the 27-year-old explained to me in an interview. Once news about the original Oculus Kickstarter came along years ago, he kept up with the progress and dreamed of a day when he’d be able to immerse himself in the gaming environment rather than simply watching the action unfold on a 2D screen.
Finally, when the Oculus Rift was released in 2016, his dream became a reality, but he couldn’t have known how being immersed in virtual environments would actually give him the confidence to face more traditional social settings.
Julian Apellanes
Apellanes became interested in gaming as a very young child. Raised by his grandparents, he would watch his grandpa play games as a toddler and by the time he was seven or eight years old, he was a master himself.
“I got my online / gaming alias from my grandpa,” explained Apellanes. “He originally came up with the name ‘Palidore’ as the name of his character in the RPG classic Baldur’s Gate, in the late 90s.”
Although his early years in gaming were spent in the lap of his granddad, watching him play and occasionally being permitted to help with a click of the mouse, eventually he began creating his own saves of the game and the name Palidore stuck with him.
Throughout his childhood and teen years, Apellanes started to spend more and more time playing games. In the case of VR, however, you’re actually more present and engaged in the virtual environments, whether you’re floating above the Earth or flying through a virtual arena.
“VR kind of blended the borders between reality and virtual reality,” said Apellanes. “It gave me the first step through that door of interacting with people a lot more so although I was still indoors and interacting with people within my own house, it was very social.”
Early studies of the technology, such as one Facebook IQ commissioned with Neurons Inc in 2017, revealed that people respond positively to interactions in virtual reality. This is particularly true of introverts, who might be less self-conscious and have more confidence in a virtual environment.
Social platforms such as AltspaceVR, Bigscreen, VR Chat, and Rec Room are revolutionizing social interactions. Games with social lobbies where players can hang out, chat, and even talk about tough life issues such as dating, schoolwork, and problems at home are indicative of the fact that people are possibly more comfortable in their virtual bodies than their real ones.
“Just getting to be part of the worlds and experience a totally different reality than you’re used to,” said Apellanes, “but still in the comfort of your own home, that’s huge.”
In the summer of 2017, Apellanes began playing in the beta of Echo Arena, a built-for-VR game from Ready At Dawn that utilizes a unique form of movement as players fly, glide, and boost through a zero-gravity environment rather than walking or teleporting. The immersive feeling of the game is so convincing that players frequently report feeling a sensation of “floating” in physical reality after initially playing the game.
Soon after the game’s release, it was featured in the first season of the Oculus-sponsored, ESL-run VR League (called VR Challenger League at the time). Apellanes created a team with two friends – Kerestell “Lemming” Smith and Bryan “iShiny” McCarthy – and they proceeded to dominate the newly formed league.
Being part of a championship team boosted Apellanes’ self-esteem, but the glory of winning also came with a price. Apellanes would have to leave the comfort of his home to compete at LAN events. Initially the team competed at Oculus Connect 4 in San Jose, California and eventually they would travel to Katowice, Poland and Leicester, England.
The team roster changed a bit during seasons 2 and 3 as Simeonk21 replaced iShiny, who remained on as coach. They managed to claim the second world championship in season 2, but failed to qualify for season 3 finals.
Apellanes took it in stride. Since he couldn’t attend VR League Season 3 Grand Finals as a finalist, the young man who wouldn’t leave his room several years earlier purchased a plane ticket to Leicester, England and attended the finals as a community member.
“Everyone has a purpose in life and sometimes it takes time to find it,” stated Apellanes. “For me, getting to go into Echo and being pretty good at it, start making friends, and things like that … my personal success there made me realize I could be good at something. I discovered who I was and who I could be.”
Since he became involved with VR esports, in addition to being one of the world’s top players, Apellanes has also written articles about his experiences and he has become a caster for the Echo ArenaVR Master League (VRML). He was recently brought on as a board member for the VRML, a community-driven platform that features the most competitive VR games on the market.
“VR allowed me to kind of show myself what I was capable of,” he stated, adding that he has been “continuing the momentum since then.”
“VR has been a positive influence in many ways,” he said. “VR has helped me socially and mentally with things like anxiety and depression. It allows you to step out of your comfort zones while still being in your comfort zone. VR lets you get out without getting out.”
When people can experience environments at a self-regulated pace, it enables them to develop coping skills that they might find difficult to develop in traditional environments. Whether someone is extremely shy or they’ve experienced trauma, the ability to control the rate of exposure to an environment is vital to success.
The phenomenon of virtual reality being used as exposure therapy without actually forcing people into stress-inducing settings in physical reality hasn’t gone unnoticed by others. Even the Veterans Administration is using virtual reality to help service members deal with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through programs such as Bravemind VR Exposure Therapy.
“VR is a tech we’ve never quite seen before,” said Apellanes. “It immerses your brain in ways it doesn’t expect. Because of that, it helped me and it helps a lot of other people step out of their comfort zones and experience new things.”
These days Apellanes stays incredibly busy casting games and promoting VR esports. He keeps his eyes open for opportunities as the industry continues to grow and he explores career avenues, looking for ways he might be able to use his talents in a world where virtual and physical realities intersect.
Do you have any stories about how VR has helped you with social anxiety, depression, or something else? Let us know down in the comments below!
Ready At Dawn Studios is the latest VR developer to be acquired by Oculus maker Facebook.
The social networking giant purchased the California-based studio for an undisclosed amount. Ready at Dawn will join Facebook’s roster of first-party game development studios working on VR titles under the Oculus Studios banner.
Ready at Dawn got its start making spin-off titles of popular PlayStation franchises for Sony’s PlayStation Portable system, including Daxter and God of War: Ghost of Sparta. In 2015, the company released a Sony-published PlayStation 4 exclusive named The Order: 1886. That same year, at Facebook’s first reveal event for the original Oculus Rift, the company confirmed it was making an exclusive game for the headset.
Lone Echo And Echo Arena
That game turned out to be two projects; 2017’s single-player adventure, Lone Echo, and a separate multiplayer game called Echo Arena. Each game utilizes a zero gravity locomotion mechanic in which players can float through the air, propelling themselves by pushing off the walls. In Lone Echo, players control a robot named Jack that assists Captain Olivia Rhodes on a dangerous mission in deep space, whereas Echo Arena offers futuristic esports. Both titles were critical successes; Lone Echo was, at least for a time, Facebook’s fastest Rift game to reach $1 million in revenue, and Echo Arena spawned an expansion in Echo Combat.
Currently, Ready at Dawn is working on a port of Echo Arena, now named Echo VR, for Oculus Quest. That’s now free to play in public beta testing, whereas Lone Echo 2 is set to release on Oculus Rift later this year. Facebook isn’t announcing any additional projects for the studio today.
Ready at Dawn is the third VR developer acquired by Facebook. In late 2019, the company bought Beat Saber developer Beat Games and then in February of this year announced the acquisition of the Asgard’s Wrath team, Sanzaru Games.
Echo VR developer Ready at Dawn is currently working on bringing the Echo Arena portion of the game to Oculus Quest, but you can already vote on if you want Echo Combat to make its way over too.
I mean, obviously you want that.
Ready at Dawn this week posted a feature request to Echo VR’s official Discord. The request is to ‘Bring Echo Combat to the Quest’ and already has plenty of votes indicating that people want that to happen. That said, don’t expect a port anytime soon no matter how many votes this gets.
“A reminder that we’re currently focused on Arena,” a member of the development team wrote under the request, “but feel free to submit and upvote any feature request.”
At the very least it will help Ready at Dawn gauge exactly what the demand is to bring the expansion to Quest. Whereas Echo Arena has players competing in matches much like a sport, Combat adds weapons into the equation for more traditional deathmatch modes and the like. We’re really fond of both modes but Combat definitely brought a fresh twist to the experience.
Still, Echo Arena is barely into its public beta testing phase at the moment, with a full release date unconfirmed, so don’t expect any concrete news on an Echo Combat port for some time. From what we’ve played, though, the port of Arena is shaping up very well.
Elsewhere, we’re still patiently awaiting news on Lone Echo 2 on Oculus Rift. Hopefully we’ll hear more soon.
