Millions of loyal fans of the game Rec Room logged in one final time to pay their final respects to the hugely popular video game as it went off the internet on Monday, June 1, at 3pm EST. Among them were popular streamers IShowSpeed and his brother Jamal.
It is no surprise that IShowSpeed was a fan of Rec Room given the streamer rose to fame with livestreams of him playing different games. On Monday, as his Jamal was streaming his final few hours in Rec Room, IShowSpeed joined the stream briefly and paid an elaborate tribute to the game that once boasted over 150 million players worldwide.
IShowSpeed’s Reveals Rec Room’s Important Role In His Career
Jamal brought IShowSpeed to his stream as he logged into Rec Room one last time. “Say your final goodbyes, man, please,” Jamal said to IShowSpeed. The streamer then appeared and paid a heartfelt, no-holds-barred tribute to the game, revealing that it was “one of the first games he played” in his streaming career.
“I just wanna say, Rec Room, I appreciate the memories that I had,” IShowSpeed said. “Rec Room was one of the first games that I played in my streaming career back in 2020, and I created good content, and it was a fun vibe for me, and it’s a very core memory for me, and it kind of hurts to see it’s gone, but Rec Room, thank you for everything.
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“Bye-bye, Rec Room. Bye-bye, Rec Room,” a visibly sad IShowSpeed added.
Why Rec Room Is Shutting Down
The end of Rec Room was announced by the Seattle-based eponymous developer in a statement on March 31. The company said that they were unable to sustain the game profitably despite its huge popularity.
“Despite this popularity, we never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business,” the statement had read. “Our costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue we brought in.”
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“We spent a long time trying to find a way to make the numbers work,” the statement read. “But with the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming, the path to profitability has gotten tough enough that we’ve made the difficult decision to shut things down.
“We’re making this decision now, while we still have the ability to wind things down thoughtfully and do right by the people who built this with us.”
It marked a sharp departure for the game, which was once valued at over $3.5 billion at its peak.