An anonymous tipster has informed me that High Fidelity is trying to sublet their San Francisco headquarters space at 185 Clara Street:
Apparently, the company is planning on moving out completely; the “entire ground floor” is available, according to this brochure.
Is this a sign of a company desperately trying to trim costs? Is High Fidelity moving their headquarters to another, cheaper location? (Hey, Philip, have you ever considered Winnipeg? It’s one hell of a lot cheaper than San Francisco. The winters are brutal, though.)
Or is High Fidelity just going to eat their own dog food, and keep working on their social VR platform as teams in various remote locations? After all, what better way to demonstrate the value of a (repurposed) product for remote business teams than to use it themselves in their day-to-day operations.
The bigger question is: is High Fidelity in serious financial trouble?
It looks pretty dead. What a pity, they had Interesting ideas, but there were too many issues. Good luck with the new business. Sansar doesn’t look more healthy. Not sustainable like this. The (non virtual) reality knocks at the door eventually. Second Life must have been a strange anomaly, that neither its founders nor the current Linden Lab appear able to replicate. I don’t know how long the old Second Life is going to last, though. VRChat concurrency remains below 10000. I’m curious about Decentraland now.