First Contact Entertainment, the developer behind such PlayStation VR titles as Firewall Ultra and Firewall Zero Hour, has announced it will be shutting down at the beginning of 2024.
First Contact took to Facebook to share the news, saying “the lack of support for VR within the industry” is one of the main reasons for this decision.
“After almost 8 years of working with the most amazing team I’ve ever have the pleasure of being part of, I’m sad to announce that we will be closing our company First Contact Entertainment by the end of the year,” First Contact Entertainment wrote. “The lack of support for VR within the industry has eventually taken its toll.
“As a AAA VR game developer, we are just not able to justify the expense needed gouging [sic] forward. We are a team of fearless innovators willing to push new technologies to its limits. I am extremely proud of the team and grateful to our investors, our partners and of course our community of dedicated and passionate players. It’s been a wild ride, Thank you!”
Firewall Ultra was released in September 2023 and we enjoyed parts of it, saying, “with two steps forward and two back, this VR sequel feels ultra ambivalent.”
“A competent sequel to the multiplayer VR shooter original in most ways, Firewall Ultra’s awkward use of eye tracking and lack of content are a shot in the foot rather than the arm,” we added in our Firewall Ultra review.
First Contact Entertainment was founded in 2016 by a group of ex-Starbreeze developers, and a now-deleted PlayStation Blog Germany post may have accidentally revealed back in February 2023 that it was working on Solaris: Offworld Combat II.
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
