{"id":518095,"date":"2026-01-15T14:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T14:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/518095\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T14:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T14:24:13","slug":"harry-potter-vr-game-reportedly-cancelled-amid-meta-budget-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/518095\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Potter VR Game Reportedly Cancelled Amid Meta Budget Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meta has closed at least three of its XR studios<\/a>, and seems to have also drastically reduced its budget for third-party Quest content too, reportedly including a now-cancelled Harry Potter VR title.<\/p>\n

The News<\/p>\n

In his latest video, YouTuber \u2018Gamertag VR\u2019<\/a> maintains Skydance Games, the makers of Skydance\u2019s Behemoth (2024),\u00a0was working on an official Harry Potter title set to be exclusive to Quest.\u00a0At least, that was before Meta ostensibly pulled funding to a number of third-party studios earlier this week.<\/p>\n

Skydance hasn\u2019t publicly announced work on the game, however Gamertag cites a \u201cvery reliable source\u201d that a Harry Potter VR title was indeed in the making before Meta pulled the plug. We\u2019ve reached out to Skydance and will update this piece when\/if we hear back.<\/p>\n

You can see Gamertag\u2019s video below:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Additionally, Gamertag maintains that the recent Cloudhead Games layoffs<\/a>, which affected 70 percent of the veteran XR studio, also came as a direct result of Meta pulling funding.<\/p>\n

Cloudhead Games, the studio behind rhythm shooter\u00a0Pistol Whip (2019), announced in 2024 it was working\u00a0on two new games<\/a>, the status of which is still under wraps.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s said Meta had already invested $60 million meant to fund new exclusive content for Quest this year.<\/p>\n

My Take<\/p>\n

In a vacuum, pulling funding from a single massively recognizable title like Harry Potter is worrying. But cutting what appears to be most, if not all of its gaming efforts signals a much bigger shift in the landscape. Meta is doubling down on smart glasses and AI, while VR and its metaverse ambitions are taking a back seat<\/a>\u2014and everyone is still digesting that, yours truly included.<\/p>\n

While Meta reportedly axed 10 percent of Reality Labs in the process, the company even seems to be counting their XR pennies in a way we simply haven\u2019t seen. XR hardware analyst Brad Lynch claims<\/a> Meta layoffs also affected \u201csome individuals who were running Meta\u2019s Horizon Start Program,\u201d which is tasked with funding independent XR developers\u2014a tool the company used over the years to not only seed goodwill in the dev community, but amplify content that may not have existed without\u00a0the expectation of platform exclusivity.<\/p>\n

As for the veracity of Gamertag\u2019s report: we\u2019re only a year away from the release of the new Harry Potter HBO series, set to kick off in 2027. It makes sense to me that the IP would be everywhere in effort to maximize eyeballs, making an official Quest title a pretty logical extension to the forthcoming attempt at rekindling Potter Mania.<\/p>\n

And I can\u2019t think of any other studio with deeper ties to traditional media than Skydance Games, which also developed The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners\u00a0VR franchise. Notably, Skydance Games\u2019 parent company is Paramount Skydance\u2014the result of a merger last year between Paramount Global, National Amusements, and Skydance Media.<\/p>\n

That said, I expect to hear more in the coming days from insider sources, which of course we\u2019ll be reporting on here, so check back soon.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re an affected developer looking to talk on or off record, drop us a line at tips@roadtovr.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta has closed at least three of its XR studios, and seems to have also drastically reduced its…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":518096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[158,67,132,68,729,730],"class_list":{"0":"post-518095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-technology","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-virtual-reality","13":"tag-vr"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115899574725465631","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}