Moss Polyarc Developer Shut Down – Engadget

Polyarc, virtual reality game developer Moss And Moss: Book IIhas closed, according to a new post on the studio’s LinkedIn page. At least 29 studio employees are currently looking for work, according to the back-hiring posted with the announcement.

“After nearly 12 years of riding the joyful rollercoaster of emotions that comes with making video games, our time together has come to an end,” says Poliark. “By winding down active development, we say goodbye to each other. It has been an honor to work together over all these years. Bringing surprise and joy to those who played our games was a privilege. Thanks to everyone at Polyarc, our work is complete.”

The Seattle studio’s Moss series was an early favorite in the virtual reality space, thanks in part to the fact that it combined traditional action-adventure gameplay with a camera system that allowed you to view diorama-like levels while controlling Quill, the series’ mouse-playing protagonist. Polyarc products have also become a reliable catalog filler for various VR platforms – Moss launched on PlayStation VR and was also ported to Oculus Quest as a launch title. Moss: Book II was similarly released on PSVR, Quest, SteamVR and Pico, and the studio even released one of the few VR games for the Apple Vision Pro, a multiplayer strategy game called Glass breakers.

In May 2026, Polyarc attempted to reach non-VR audiences with Moss: a forgotten relicwhich combined the Moss series into one game and reimagined the gameplay so that it didn’t require a VR headset to play. It is unknown how well the game sold, but it was clearly not enough to keep the studio afloat. A bigger problem could be changes in the virtual reality ecosystem that make it harder to launch new projects. Earlier this year, Meta began its big pivot away from the metaverse and toward artificial intelligence products. Not only has the company closed several of its own VR studios, but its exit from that space has likely made it even more difficult to fund new VR games.

Even though the studio is closed, all Polyarc games are still available for purchase. If you have a VR headset collecting dust somewhere and haven’t tried it yet, it’s definitely worth playing.