Category: Rec Room

Rec Room Goes on a Hiring Spree

I find it interesting that, at a time when some social VR platforms are struggling mightily to survive (e.g. Sansar, ChilloutVR), others are going from strength to strength. One of the latter is Rec Room, which in March 2021 raised US$100 million dollars more venture capital at a US$1.25 billion dollar company valuation.

Well, Rec Room is spending some of that money on attracting new talent! Yesterday, Shawn Whiting of Rec Room tweeted:

Good day to mention – if you’re interested in the metaverse, online communities, and the future of how people play and build together: Rec Room has ~60 open positions in art, design, engineering, data, marketing, HR, ops, support, etc.

Among the job vacancies posted on the Rec Room website are the following:

  • lighting and technical artists
  • senior software engineers
  • game designers
  • marketing people, including a Creative Marketing Strategist

If you’re qualified and interested, I would suggest you take a peek! Meta’s push towards the metaverse is going to open up a world of opportunities for people with the right skillsets. Remember, a rising tide lifts all boats!

For more information about Rec Room, visit their website, join their Discord, or follow them on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube.

Rec Con is Coming to Rec Room September 24th to 26th, 2021!

Rec Con, the virtual fan convention held in Rec Room, is back! According to the official announcement:

Rec Con 2021 is coming SOON™! We’re back and can’t wait to have you join us at Rec Con on September 24th, 25th and 26th, 2021. We’ve done a bunch of work to make sure Rec Con is even bigger and better this year!

Grab a friend, party up, and let’s get together to explore the Rec Room community and beyond!

Rec Con is a free community event where players from all around the world meet up for various activities, Q&As, exhibit halls, panels, special events, and more!

We’re planning special events, panels, and afterparties featuring Rec Room developers, game devs and industry speakers, YouTubers, and musical guests. This year we have exciting new technology that allows special events to be broadcasted live to hundreds of rooms – events will no longer have to be limited to 40 people!

This event is free and you don’t need to register; just look for the special ^RecCon room in Rec Room. The programming schedule and special events will be announced later in September. Some events will also be livestreamed on their YouTube channel.

See you there!

Rec Room Hosts the RecLympics

Popular social VR platform Rec Room is holding a major event over the next three weeks in August: the first-ever VR Olympics*!

According to a report in VRSout:

This weekend marks the start of the inaugural Reclympics, a VR competition hosted by popular social VR platform Rec Room. Over the next three weeks, competitors from around the globe will go head-to-head in a variety of custom-made VR games in hopes of returning home with a coveted gold medal.

The Reclympics will feature seven games in total:

  • Archery
  • Discus Throw
  • Dodgeball
  • Laser Tag
  • Paintball
  • Stunt Runner (a solo competition in which players parkour their way through a complex obstacle course)
  • Ultimate Frisbee

The entirety of the summer games will be broadcast live on YouTube during the scheduled event times. You will need to register for the events, and you have to have at least a Level 30 Rec Room account in order to participate. You can read all the details here. (The registration deadlines for Stunt Runner and Laser Tag have already passed, but you can still register for the other events.)

Thank you to Rainwolf for the heads-up!

*Hmmm, I wonder if the official Olympics knows about this, and what they think. The Olympics have always been very touchy about their intellectual property!

Rec Room Adds Full-Body Costumes

Rec Room‘s current avatars are pretty basic, consisting of a head, torso, and hands, but in a brand new feature, the social VR platform allows you to create full-body costumes with arms and legs!

A couple of examples of Rec Room’s new full-body costumes (image source)

Scott Hayden wrote in a July 13th, 2021 story on Road to VR:

Ever since the social VR platform Rec Room launched in 2016, its avatar system has notably lacked full-body inverse kinematics like you see in its contemporary VRChat, which essentially leaves users with a stylized appearance lacking arms and legs. Now the studio says it’s releasing an update that will allow you to buy more articulated avatar outfits which should add more flexibility to how you can look in the game.

The studio tells us that the new costumes will let you look like “almost anything imaginable.” 

Here’s an 8-minute YouTube video walking you through the process of creating a full-body costume:

Full-body costumes will no doubt be added to other user-generated content such as avatar accessories, rooms, and gadgets, which form part of its Community Commerce initiative. Scott Hayden points out:

And the name of the game is content creation, it seems. The studio says it now hosts over five million user-generated rooms. With its mounting currency-earning opportunities for users, the company seems to be well on its way to paying out to creators what it says should amount to $1 million by the end of 2021.

This content expansion follows a landmark $100 million financing round, bringing the company’s valuation to $1.25 billion. This makes Rec Room one of the most valuable VR companies outside of platform holders Facebook and Sony.

In the coming months, Rec Room is also readying an Android version which will feature cross-play with all supported platforms, which include iOS devices, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC via Steam, Oculus Quest, and all SteamVR-compatible headsets.

It would appear that Rec Room is going to strength to strength! The social VR platform is especially popular among the highly-desired youth demographic, attracting many children and teenagers with easy-to-use in-world building tools. The addition of full-body costumes will provide a new way for users to flex their creativity!

For more information about Rec Room, visit their website, join their Discord, or follow them on social media: TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube.