Meta buys three VR game studios, adds Iron Man, Among Us to gaming line-up

Facebook parent Meta has snapped up three virtual reality (VR) gaming studios to strengthen its Oculus Studios division, the company announced at its annual Meta Connect developer conference on October 11, continuing with its acquisition spree in the virtual reality space.

The studios joining Meta's video game development unit include Iron Man VR developer Camouflaj, Wilson's Heart developer Twisted Pixel and Armature Studio, the team behind the VR port of Capcom's Resident Evil 4 on Meta Quest 2.

During the event, Meta announced that Iron Man VR will debut on its Quest 2 VR headset on November 3. The game was previously released on Sony's PlayStation VR platform in 2020.

The company didn't announce any new projects from other two studios "It’ll be a while before we can reveal what they’re working on, but we’re excited to continue working with and supporting these developers as they bring ambitious and forward-thinking games to VR" it said in an official blogpost.

Over the past couple of years, Meta has picked up several virtual reality (VR) firms such as Within (makers of Supernatural VR fitness app), BigBox VR (Population: One and Smashbox Arena), Downpour Interactive (Onward), Unit 2 Games (free-to-play game creation and sharing tool Crayta), Ready at Dawn (Lone Echo and others), Beat Games (Beat Saber), and Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath and others).

This also resulted in the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) suing the social networking giant in July 2022 to stop its acquisition of Within, alleging that the deal would "substantially lessen competition, or tend to create a monopoly" in the market for VR-focused fitness apps. Meta had said it disagreed with FTC's analysis.

Other title launches

At the event, Meta announced that users have spent about $1.5 billion on games and apps on the Quest Store to date.

About one-third of the nearly 400 titles on the Quest Store have made at least $1 million in revenue and around 33 Quest titles have made more than $10 million in gross revenue, up from 22 titles in February 2022.

Among other key announcements include the VR version of the popular social deduction game Among Us that will make its debut on November 10.

BigBox VR's Population: One title is getting a new user-generated content (UGC) game creator called Sandbox that will enable anyone to build, share, and play new games.

Skydance Interactive's The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners - Chapter 2: Retribution title will release on December 1, 2022. The studio is also working on a new survival game called Behemoth.