Sign of the Times? – Ryan Schultz

Glue, a company collaboration social VR platform I first wrote about in November 2019, has declared chapter. In a put up dated April tenth, 2024 on the Glue web site, Glue’s CEO, Jussi Havu, writes:

We remorse to tell you that the corporate accountable for Glue has been declared bankrupt on 8 April 2024 by choice of the District Courtroom of Helsinki. Regardless of our greatest efforts to stop this final result, we had been unable to discover a well timed answer.

Throughout the subsequent two weeks, we’re devoted to exploring all choices to safe a successor for the Glue service. As we can not promise a definitive answer, customers ought to put together for the chance that the Glue service could quickly be discontinued.

The method to promote the belongings of the corporate is present process and, at this stage, the chapter property can not present any additional data on whether or not the corporate’s enterprise operations will be bought to somebody who can be keen to proceed the enterprise. Until a successor will be discovered, the corporate’s enterprise operations might be discontinued throughout the course of two weeks and even earlier if the service suppliers for the corporate’s servers determine to close the servers down or deny entry as a consequence of unpaid invoices.

We sincerely apologize for this disappointing final result.

While updating my comparative spreadsheet of social VR platforms, I had already observed a distressing variety of platforms I had written about in 2019 had been not round as of 2024, amongst them well-liked companies similar to AltspaceVR, which shut down virtually precisely one 12 months in the past right now, on March tenth, 2023. The class of platforms which I jocularly discuss with as YARTVRA (an acronym standing for Yet Another Remote Teamwork Virtual Reality Application) has seen a lot of firms come and go throughout the current boom-and-bust metaverse hype cycle. Now that the hype over the metaverse has moved on to synthetic intelligence, it might seem that the enterprise capitalists have adopted, so it’s no suprise to me that corporations similar to Glue have struggled to discover a viable enterprise mannequin.

One factor which any particular person or firm which makes use of a social VR app for distant teamwork, conferences, and conferences wants to remember: don’t put all of your eggs into one basket! Examine a number of platforms, and be versatile. That approach, you gained’t be caught off-guard when an organization whose product you’ve been counting on goes underneath.

Sadly, I simply observed right now that the XR Collaboration web site, which used to supply a really helpful searchable listing of office social VR platforms, has folded (the web site handle seems to have been bought to a different person, who’s primarily posting articles about the right way to discover out in case your boyfriend or husband is dishonest on you!). That is yet one more signal that the complete YARTVRA area is in problem.

Thanks to Carlos Austin for the heads-up!