Meta is pulling the plug on multiplayer support in Beat Saber for the original Quest headset.
Starting November 2, Beat Saber on the original Quest headset will no longer be able to access multiplayer. The headset sold from 2019 to 2020 when it was replaced by Quest 2. Facebook bought the studio behind the game in 2019, with Beat Games kicking off a series of VR gaming acquisitions in the push toward Horizon.
Quest 2 released in 2020 and Quest 3 late 2023 and Beat Saber multiplayer continues to connect players from Steam to PlayStation VR2 headsets. The game will still be accessible on original Quest headsets “but Multiplayer functionality will stop and Leaderboards might be phased out in the future.” The reasoning is given as “to focus our development efforts on our next projects within Beat Saber”.
Meta started the formal process of warning buyers Quest 1 was heading toward obsolescence last year.
Beat Saber’s co-founders left the company and Downpour Interactive’s founder didn’t wait long before jumping from Meta. Meta’s Camouflaj acquisition bought the platform the just-announced Batman: Arkham Shadow and Asgard’s Wrath 2 is still seeing new content releases, but what is going on with the other half dozen studios Meta acquired over the last few years?
We’ll have updates as soon as we get them on Meta’s long-brewing efforts in VR gaming as they go toe-to-toe with Google and Apple this year. In what may be a telling reality about the long journey from Oculus Rift to Horizon OS at Facebook and Meta, though, Beat Saber multiplayer should still be playable on the original Oculus Quest after November 2 under a specific scenario — if you play it from the place where it started — streaming from PC.
In other words, 1 percent of SteamVR is still using an original Quest and any of them still using that to drive Beat Saber via the Rift Store or Steam should be unaffected by this change.
