After Building One of VR’s Most Successful Games, ‘Beat Saber’ Founder Plans to Take a Break from VR

Jan ‘Split’ Ilavsky, founder of Beat Games and creator behind VR’s favorite block-slashing rhythm game Beat Saber (2018), left the studio late last month, stepping down from his position as the game’s Creative Director. Now, Ilavsky tells Road to VR he’s taking an extended break from VR altogether.

After creating one of VR’s most successful games financially to date, which generated over $100 million in revenue in 2021 alone, it’s safe to say Ilavsky deserves a break.

Jan ‘Split’ Ilavsky

Speaking to Road to VR, Ilavsky says he doesn’t have “any big plans ready now,” saying that he “most probably won’t be doing any VR for some time.”

“The last six years have been an amazing ride,” Ilavsky said on X. “When I created the first prototype of Beat Saber, I thought it might be just another small solo project, similar to some of the games I had made before. However, something felt different this time.”

First demoed publicly at GDC 2018, it was clear the Czechia-based studio had something special in their hands. Back then, the indie studio was still running under the name Hyperbolic Magnetism, although it wasn’t long before it adopted the moniker Beat Games, which was right around the time it was acquired by Meta (ex-Facebook) for an undisclosed sum.

Launching with music created by composer and DJ Jaroslav Beck in 2018, who also recently left the company, Meta’s deep pockets and industry contacts transformed the viral sensation into a revenue-generating powerhouse, striking deals with record labels to bring to the game music from a host of artists, including LizzoSkrillexBTSGreen DayTimbalandLinkin ParkImagine Dragons, and more recently Daft Punk.

While Ilavsky is taking a break from VR, he would eventually like to return to his roots: “working on innovative games,” he says. “The game industry is a challenging place to be, and I couldn’t be more grateful for all the experiences I’ve had and the amazing people I’ve met along the way.”

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‘Beat Saber’ Celebrates 4 Years Since Launch with Free Remixes of Classic Songs

Beat Saber (2018), arguably VR’s most popular game, is celebrating four years since it first launched on VR headsets with free tracks that remix two super recognizable songs from the game’s first OST.

The new tracks are remixes of Jaroslav Beck’s ‘Escape’ and ‘100$ Bills’, respectively dubbed Escape (Tokyo Machine Remix) from EDM DJ Tokyo Machine and 100$ Bills (Camellia’s ‘215$-Step’ Remix) from Japanese composer Camellia.

Here’s a quick preview of Camellia’s remix of 100$ Bills:

There’s also a new anniversary themed environment, which Beat Games says in a blog post includes cakes and banners. Called ‘The Second’, the new level is a remake of the original OST 1 environment (aka ‘The First’).

Over the last four years, developers Beat Games was acquired by Meta (then Facebook) which saw a near-constant release of paid and free DLC. Meta’s deep pockets allowed the studio to cut deals with record labels which has seen content from high-profile artists such as SkrillexBTSGreen DayTimbalandLinkin Park, and Imagine Dragons, not to mention the Interscope Music Pack featuring tracks from the likes of Kendrick Lamar, OneRepublic, Limp Bizkit, and Maroon 5.

The most recent release was the game’s Electronic Mixtape which brought tracks from Madeon, Deadmau5, Fatboy Slim, and more.

Available across all supported devices, including Quest 2, SteamVR headsets and PSVR, you can find both songs in the ‘Extras’ section of your song library.

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‘Beat Saber’ Wants to Get Your Heart Pumping in New Free Track ‘FitBeat’

Beat Saber (2018) is a great tool if you’re stuck indoors and want to stay fit. To keep you up and moving, Beat Games today released their latest free track, called ‘FitBeat’, which aims to get your heart pumping to its high BMP, obstacle-laden track.

The new song, which looks to include plenty of walls to dodge to keep you on your toes, is offered through a few modes, including Standard, One Saber and 360°/90° Modes.

“We just wanted to bring you a fun song and get you pumped,” says Beat Games, which released the track today on all supported VR platforms, including SteamVR headsets, PSVR, and Oculus Quest. Like many of the early tracks, ‘FitBeat’ was created by Jaroslav Beck, the co-founder and head of music at Beat Games.

To date, Beat Saber has sold more than 2 million copies and 10 million songs via DLC, making it one of the (if not “the”) most successful VR games out there. Since being acquired by Facebook, the studio has managed to wrangle licensing deals with a number of well known artists such as Imagine Dragons, Green Day, Panic at the Disco!, and Timbaland, all of which no doubt gives them more incentive to keep the free tracks flowing.

Check out this player who already conquered FitBeat on Expert+.

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Beat Saber’s Jaroslav Beck Looks To Invest In Other VR Developers

Jaroslav Beck recently stepped down from his role as CEO of the company behind Beat Saber to “fully focus on our music roadmap and future opportunities.”

Now he’s looking to invest in “supporting new developers.”

Beck is the mind behind the incredibly catchy music of Beat Saber which helped cement its status as worldwide hit by giving players satisfying songs to dance-slice their way to the top of the scoreboard. Beat Games is the Prague-based company behind Beat Saber and it is currently led by Vladimir Hrincar, who co-created the game with Jan Ilavsky.

Beck, meanwhile, is apparently working to chart the company’s course through the entrenched players of the music industry. At Gamescom this year he said he saw a number of new VR games and decided “it would be great to put a bunch money together and start supporting new developers who are creating games or applications for VR and who are thinking a little bit more out of the box, because I believe that VR desperately needs new directions in game mechanics and overall approach.”

Beck says it is a personal project. I reached out to him after he posted the above video to see what kind of a response he’s getting. He said he’s a bit overwhelmed by that response, but still interested in seeing more VR projects and providing advice or financial investment. Beck’s direct messages on Twitter are open.

The post Beat Saber’s Jaroslav Beck Looks To Invest In Other VR Developers appeared first on UploadVR.

Beat Games CEO Steps Down to Focus on ‘Beat Saber’ Music

Beat Games, the studio behind Beat Saber (2018), announced that company CEO Jaroslav Beck will be stepping down from his position to further pursue music deals for the studio’s block-slashing rhythm game.

Beat Games says in a multi-part tweet that Vladimir Hrincar, the co-creator behind Beat Saber (along with Jan Ilavsky), is taking over the role of the CEO.

Image courtesy Jaroslav Beck

Beck, known for creating much of the game’s original tracks, initially made a name for himself in the games industry by producing music compositions for several franchises, including music for Overwatch short films, an introduction trailer to StarCraft: Legacy of the Void, and trailers for EA Games’ Battlefield.

In 2016, Beck founded Epic Music Productions, a studio focusing on soundtrack music composition for both the games and movie industry.

In May 2018, Beck took over as CEO of the newly formed studio Beat Games, which was previously named Hyperbolic Magnetism.

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Beat Games says the transition will give Beck “much bigger flexibility in pursuing music opportunities and initiatives for Beat Saber and continue to deliver the best music content for our community.”

According to Beck’s LinkedIn, he now holds the position ‘Head of Music at Beat Games’.

The game’s most recent deal brought in a DLC pack with 10 playable tracks from American pop-rock band Imagine Dragons. The studio previously released a DLC pack from various electronic artists under the Monstercat recording label.

Beck is currently working on Beat Saber’s OST Vol. III, which still doesn’t have a release date yet at the time of this writing.

The post Beat Games CEO Steps Down to Focus on ‘Beat Saber’ Music appeared first on Road to VR.

‘Beat Saber’ on Quest Will be Fully Featured at Launch, Use Identical Tracking Logic

Beat Saber developer Beat Games confirmed to Road to VR that the game will include all official features, modes, and music when it launches with Quest this Spring. Additionally, the studio says it didn’t have to make any concessions on tracking input logic to account for Quest’s inside-out tracked controllers.

As far as standalone VR headsets go, Quest is the very first that will natively run Beat Saber, and we have been suitably impressed with its ability to handle the game’s hardest difficulty without tracking issues. As good as it felt in our hands-on, there was always the possibility that the developers had to introduce some invisible handicapping to make sure it worked well against the limitations and challenges of inside-out tracking.

However, Beat Saber creator Jan “Split” Ilavsky tells Road to VR that the Quest version of the game uses identical tracking logic to both PC and PSVR versions of the game. That’s impressive considering the kind of tracking performance that playing Beat Saber at a high level demands. Ilavsky said that the studio didn’t have to make any adjustments at all to compensate for the headset’s inside-out controller tracking.

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Beat Games CEO and composer Jaroslav Beck confirmed to Road to VR that Beat Saber on Quest will be the full game right at launch, including all official features, modes, and music as found on other platforms.

When Beat Saber first launched on PlayStation VR late last year, it included a good deal of exclusive content which was not available on the PC version at the time (like a Campaign mode with unique challenges, modifiers, and exclusive music). Last month, the PC version saw a major update which brought feature and content parity to the game on both platforms. At launch, the Quest version will be identical in terms of content and official music, Beck said.

One significant feature—custom song support—is only available on PC, as it is enabled through unofficial third-party mods. Such mods cannot run on PlayStation. It’s just about certain that Beat Saber on Quest will not officially support custom songs, though it remains unclear if it will be possible to deploy third-party mods to enable custom songs on Quest.

– – — – –

Beat Saber is a confirmed launch title for Quest, though the headset’s actual release date is still no more specific than “Spring.” With Facebook’s annual developer conference, F8, coming up at the end of the month, we’re expecting to see the company either launch the headset at the event outright, or provide a final launch date.

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‘Beat Saber’ Sells Over One Million Copies

Beat Games, the Czech Republic-based indie developers behind Beat Saber (2018), announced they’ve sold over one million copies of their popular block-slashing rhythm game—a figure calculated across all supported VR platforms.

Beat Games CEO Jaroslav Beck announced the news in a video blog, saying he optimistically expected the game to reach 150,000 copies before its release, a number three times larger than the team’s pre-launch estimation.

“What happened, nobody could have ever predicted. Even guys from the industry who we spoke with [including advisers and long-time industry professionals] told us we’re freaks if you think we can get this number,” said Beck.

Speaking to Variety, Beck further said Beat Saber’s success wasn’t the result of a prolonged PR campaign, attributing its popularity to word-of-mouth.

“We did zero PR whatsoever,” Beck told Variety. “We didn’t expect that it would blow up that crazy.”

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The one million figure includes consumer sales only, the studio confirmed with Road to VR, and not sales from location-based facilities. Beat Saber is available on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows VR headsets (early access), and on PSVR.

We haven’t heard specific numbers from other VR developers for comparison, although it’s possible Beat Saber could be the first VR game to reach the one million sales mark.

Notably, Beat Saber was ranked the second most downloaded PSVR game of 2018, vaulting to the slot within only one month before the close of the year. It’s also been featured in a bespoke PSVR hardware bundle with Borderlands 2 VR (2018).

The announcement came alongside the studio’s recent release of Beat Saber’s first paid DLC music pack, dubbed ‘Monstercat Music Pack 1,” which adds 10 EDM songs to the game across all platforms.

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‘Beat Saber’ Expert+ Difficulty Levels Come to PSVR, “a lot, lot of music coming”

Prepare to sweat (and probably curse) because Beat Games, the studio behind block-slashing rhythm game Beat Saber (2018), today released a new Expert+ mode to its suite of existing songs on PSVR.

Along with it, the update brings a new option in the settings that allows ‘Reduced Debris’, something the studio says greatly helps visibility in Expert+ by reducing the particle effects so you can get an easier view of incoming blocks.

Jaroslav Beck, the musician behind many of the game’s songs, released a blog video detailing the Expert+ difficulty modes, saying that the update was initially planned a few days before but suffered from an issue surrounding integration of leader boards.

Beck also spoke about the third original soundtrack for Beat Saber. Beck will be in LA in the next weeks to meet “some pretty amazing artists,” but also says free songs are coming too despite the ever-present need to pay revenue shares to artists.

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“I don’t know when this will be ready. This is pretty unpredictable when we will finish the music, it’s [essentially] the same as code. What you need to understand is there will be music packs because we paid to give a revenue share to the artists or to the label and then we would still like to release music that’s never been heard before, and this music will be free with every update,” Beck said.

“I think there will be a lot, lot of music coming,” he concluded.

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Beat Games: First Song Pack for ‘Beat Saber’ Could Arrive on PSVR This Month

Beat Games co-founder and CEO Jaroslav Beck tweeted today that the PSVR version of hit rhythm game Beat Saber (2018) could be getting its first song pack sometime this month.

The PSVR version of Beat Saber, which launched early last month, features 16 songs, each of them with varying levels of difficulty.

Late last month the studio said that the music for first PSVR song pack was ready and being mapped—no small task, even for an indie studio that’s celebrated such wide success with the release of their game on both PSVR and PC VR (still in early access).

Now, Beck says that the first song pack should hopefully be done by the end of 2018. That’s only a little under three weeks away.

There’s still no word on the track list, or how many songs will be available for PSVR users. However you slice it (pun intended), the studio is nearing the finish line. Let’s just hope it’s here in time for Christmas.

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The studio has also kept mum on when to expect an official track editor of PC VR users too, although PC players have had the benefit of non-official track editor and community-driven song expansion software ‘Beat Saver’ for some time now—a luxury that PSVR users haven’t had, making it clear where Beat Games’ priorities lie for now.

The post Beat Games: First Song Pack for ‘Beat Saber’ Could Arrive on PSVR This Month appeared first on Road to VR.

‘Beat Saber’ Lets You Become the Music Through Puzzles Your Body Solves – Creator Interview

Beat Saber is a rhythm game that plays like an embodied puzzle game which creates a visceral connection to 10 custom music tracks. It’s similar to Soundboxing and Audio Shield, but you use extended lightsabers rather than your fists, which makes you feel like a ninja. I had a chance to talk with the chief programmer Jan Ilavsky and music composer Jaroslav Beck at GDC about the development of Beat Saber, some more details about their scoring algorithm, and where they’re taking it in the future.

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I had a chance to get early practice with the beta version, and I played for an hour a day over the course of a week. It’s an extremely satisfying game that I expect will have a lot of crossover appeal for people who have never tried VR before. The LIV mixed reality streaming integration means that you’re going to be seeing a lot of Beat Saber videos in the next few weeks of people sharing their perfect runs, flow states, and expressions of personality through dancing. Beat Saber really utilizes the best aspects of embodied gameplay that is completely unique to VR, and there is a challenging puzzle aspect with the arrows dictating which direction you need to swipe.

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Beat Saber launched in early access on Steam on May 1st, and there’s a lot more content and features sure to come in the future.

Here’s a couple of my runs of Beat Saber on expert mode:


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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

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