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Award-Winning Oculus Story Studio Unexpectedly Shut Down by Facebook

The VR storytelling studio behind Lost, Henry, and Dear Angelica is being shut down.
Asif Khan
Asif Khan
15

The turnover and tumult continues at Oculus as its parent company, Facebook, announced that they would be shuttering award-winning Oculus Story Studio today. This groundbreaking team that won an Emmy Award last year for Henry, the adorable VR story about a porcupine on his birthday, is being shut down. They also released the highly praised Dear Angelica earlier this year and made a splash in 2015 with their Lost VR demo. All three VR demos will remain on the Oculus Home store, according to Jason Rubin, Oculus VP Content.

This bad news comes on the back of Brendan Iribe stepping down as CEO of the company, Zenimax being awarded $500 million due to an NDA breach, and Palmer Luckey's departure from the company at the end of March 2017. Oculus did not have a booth at CES 2017, and their booth space from E3 2016 is being occupied by NVIDIA this year. Something is up at Oculus.

Perhaps Facebook is stepping away from the Oculus brand altogether with an intention to rebrand the division as Facebook VR? No matter what the motivation was to shut down Oculus Story Studio, it is definitely a head scratcher. They were truly pioneers of a new medium of storytelling and Shacknews will forever be grateful for their great work.

Shackers with Rifts should definitely download Lost, Henry, and Dear Angelica now on Oculus Home right now. They are all free.

Check out this footage of Lost.

CEO/EIC/EIEIO
CEO/EIC/EIEIO

Asif Khan is the CEO, EIC, and majority shareholder of Shacknews. He began his career in video game journalism as a freelancer in 2001 for Tendobox.com. Asif is a CPA and was formerly an investment adviser representative. After much success in his own personal investments, he retired from his day job in financial services and is currently focused on new private investments. His favorite PC game of all time is Duke Nukem 3D, and he is an unapologetic fan of most things Nintendo. Asif first frequented the Shack when it was sCary's Shugashack to find all things Quake. When he is not immersed in investments or gaming he is a purveyor of fine electronic music. Asif also has an irrational love of Cleveland sports.

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