Powerwash Simulator Studio Is Stopping VR Development, But At Least There Are No Layoffs
Powerwash Simulator became a surprise hit when it launched in 2022 and went live critical applausean enviable number of players, crossovers from SpongeBob SquarePants To Warhammer 40,000 and even academic approval from Oxford. Despite all this success, it failed to crack the tough nut of virtual reality, and today FuturLab announced that it was giving up.
“I’m sorry to inform you that we will not be continuing to support Powerwash Simulator VR,” FuturLab CEO Kirsty Rigden said in a statement posted on the website bluesky. “We really love and believe in virtual reality, so it doesn’t mean we won’t support it in the future, but we can’t continue to support it right now.
“We found ourselves at a crossroads: we had a really great and kind VR team that was working on a platform that was costing us more than it made, and at the same time we had a list of positions that we wanted to fill on other projects. We have decided to move our VR team to other projects/roles. While I would love to live in a world where we could support Powerwash Simulator on any existing platform, I will always choose job security for my team.”
This is certainly disappointing for VR proponents, but it’s not all that surprising. VR remains extremely niche, with the share of Steam users with VR headsets still hovering around 2%, according to the latest data. hardware and software inspection numbers that aren’t universal but are certainly a barometer, and Powerwash Simulator VR may have suffered even more from being Exclusive meta-questwhich means no VR on Steam.
Despite this, Rigden has earned praise on social media for being open about the reason Powerwash Simulator VR was being discontinued (lack of money) and for reassigning developers to other projects rather than simply letting go of the VR team.
FuturLab clarified in a follow-up post that the base game and currently released DLC will remain available to purchase and play, there just won’t be any further support or new content for them.