Beat Saber developers have announced that they are ending support for the game on Meta Quest 1. The message is coming at a time when there has been uncertainty about the growth of the VR market. Earlier this year, it was reported that Sony had paused the production of PS VR2 due to a mountain backlog of unsold inventory.
Meta Quest 1 was previously called Oculus
“Dear players, to focus our development efforts on our next projects within Beat Saber, we will no longer support Meta Quest 1 as of November 2, 2024,” the developers announced through a post on X. “The game will continue to be playable, but Multiplayer functionality will stop and Leaderboards might be phased out in the future.”
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The biggest question after the announcement was whether the game will still be playable. In a comment under the announcement, the developers provided further context on the announcement that should help to allay any fears that owners of the game may have after reading the original announcement.
“Beat Saber base game and all previously purchased add-on DLC content is tied to your account and transferable across the Meta Quest & Rift platform. Beat Saber supports cross-buy between all headsets from the Meta family, including Meta Quest 3/2/1, Meta Quest Pro, and Rift/Rift S.”
On the game’s FAQ page, the developers added that their goal “is to raise the bar of what’s possible”. Apparently, the developers will be shifting their efforts to developing the game on the current generation of VR headsets.
The announcement means that players should expect no further updates from the developers for Quest 1. Players who may have technical issues will likely not get support either. To access Beat Saber on Meta Quest 1, the developers have advised players to do so through the Meta Quest Link. Also, players can back up their game data using Cloud backup on Meta Quest devices. Check here for details.
Players react to Beat Saber’s discontinued support on Quest 1
Some players are already expressing doubt about continuing their Beat Saber experience. VFX compositor Sandra Ross wrote, “Guess I’m not playing Beat Saber anymore. Shame. I don’t intend to spend another 400.00 on a headset. Multiplayer is part of the playability factor. You take that away it’s like 50% of functionality that adds to the game vs. playing solo.”
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Beat Saber really was the last bastion of the Quest 1. What a run, but it’s time for it to rest
— MadBrax | 🍅 | Persona Brain Rot (@BraxLive) May 6, 2024
Beat Saber was developed by Slovaks Ján Ilavský, Vladimír Hrinčár, and Peter Hrinčár and published by Czech-based Beat Games in 2018. Meta Quest was launched in May 2019 by Meta. The company announced in 2020 that it would stop selling Quest 1. In March this year, the company ended support for the hardware.
Looking at the trend, it is not surprising that Beat Saber has taken the tough decision to also abandon the platform and start exploring how to maximize the power of the current-gen VR headsets.
