Once again, I am a little late on reporting this news, but last October, the vTime social VR app (which had renamed itself to vTime XR) suddenly shut down, with apparently no plans to resume service.
According to a post on their website:
For just shy of a decade, vTime XR has been a space where people from around the world could meet, chat, and share despite the distance between them. Since our launch in December 2015, over 1.4 million people from across the globe have connected through our app, the first cross-reality social network. You’ve met across continents, shared stories with strangers who became friends, found love, and even proposed in virtual reality. During the pandemic, you turned virtual worlds into lifelines of connection.
When the time came to say goodbye, we’d hoped we could give you plenty of notice, with time to relive your favourite memories, meet up with friends, and hold one last farewell party in the app.
Unfortunately, a vulnerability in Unity (the engine we used to build vTime XR) has been recently discovered, and it affects the current version of the app. As much as it upsets us to close vTime XR without notice, we’re unable to patch the vulnerability, and we can’t risk the safety of our community by keeping the app online. Importantly, there’s no evidence that this issue has been exploited or that it has had any impact on our users.
So, with heavy hearts, we’ll be taking vTime XR offline immediately. It’s especially difficult knowing that December 22nd would have marked our 10th anniversary, a milestone we would have loved to celebrate with you all.
We know many of you will want to hold on to memories you have stored in the app. Your account will still be accessible via a browser until April 10th, 2026, so you can download any pictures, messages or other data you’d like to keep. We’ll delete all user account data after this date. We also recommend that you delete the vTime XR app from your devices, as it will no longer function and could be affected by the vulnerability.
Surviving almost a decade in the volatile world of social VR is a rarity! But the sudden closing of metaverse platforms is, sadly, not that unusual. While I am not familiar with the security issue identified in VTime’s underlying Unity engine (used in many virtual world and social VR platforms), I am a little surprised that the Liverpool, U.K.-based team behind the project felt that they had no other choice but to shut it down without notice, without even allowing their users to meet up and throw a final farewell party like other metaverse platforms had done (e.g. Cloud Party, another rather obscure platform). Idle speculation here: perhaps a server bill was due that they realized they couldn’t afford to pay, which forced matters to a head? But we’ll never know for certain.
Then again, I don’t believe that vTime was a very popular platform to begin with. One of its limitations was that your avatar was rooted in place, sitting with a group of avatars who were similarly glued to their seats (at least, that’s how I remembered it when I did visit last, probably around 7 or 8 years ago). While you could change the scenery, and some environments were lovely, essentially it was a sit-and-chat app (something VRChat and many other metaverse platforms did much, much better).
The last time I wrote specifically about vTime on my blog was on Dec. 3rd, 2019, a little over six years ago (although I did mention vTime in a 2021 blogpost about recent academic research into nonverbal communication in social VR). And, in all my metaverse-hopping travels, I have rarely encountered anyone who mentioned that they used vTime, other perhaps to check it out of curiosity (as I had done). Compared to popular and beloved platforms like AltspaceVR (R.I.P.) and VRChat, vTime was a relic. I’m honestly surprised they lasted this long.
My guess is that the developer team decided that it simply wasn’t worth the money, time, and work involved to re-engineer a relatively obscure, little-used metaverse platform, and decided to pull the plug. Hey, no shame; it’s a decision I can respect. And, in the news item I quoted above, they do appear to hold out some hope for a new, fresh beginning:
Thank you for being part of this incredible journey. For every conversation, every laugh, and every friendship forged in our destinations, we are forever grateful. Though we’re saying goodbye to this chapter in vTime’s history, we can’t wait to show you what’s coming next.
You can read all my blogposts about vTime here.
P.S. I’d dearly love to know who proposed marriage in vTime, as mentioned in the news item I quoted above—I bet they have an interesting tale to tell.
With thanks to my metaverse friend Carlos Austin for the heads-up.
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