VR developer and publisher nDreams, the studio behind VR titles like Reach, Vendetta Forever, Synapse, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, and more, have just announced "a significant reduction in overall staffing levels," resulting in the closure of two of its internal studios, Near Light and Compass studios.
Confirmed in a statement on the company's LinkedIn page, the layoffs will impact studios across nDreams' suite of teams as the company gets restructured to put nDreams Elevation at its core, though only the aforementioned Near Light and Compass will be shuttered. Between the studios, 78 developers are impacted by the closures.
nDreams was acquired by Swedish tech company Aonic back in 2023 for $110 million, shortly after the release of Synapse and Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord. Since the acquisition, the studio has released Vendetta Forever, PowerWash Simulator VR, Frenzies, Grit & Valor: 1949, Top Hat, Wreckin' Raccoon, Oh My Galaxy, and Reach.
While nDreams Elevation will continue to work on the unannounced projects it has on the go, nDreams will keep "a lean group dedicated to XR R&D." These layoffs also seemingly impacted all branches of nDreams, including executive and senior leadership roles.
"Despite every effort to make our existing structure a success and avert this outcome, the VR games market remains challenging, making further changes necessary to ensure a commercially viable and sustainable future," nDreams writes.
VR has been heralded as an exciting new frontier in video games for years now, and despite the fact that many people who have tried VR headsets will tell you there's nothing like it, and that there are some truly incredible VR experiences to be had in games like Half-Life: Alyx, it has remained a niche section of the video games industry.
It's possible that new and improved headsets like the Steam Frame could play a part in building new momentum for the sector, but if memory prices continue to skyrocket, specialized devices like VR headsets will be even further out of reach for players who've perhaps been curious about the tech, but always deemed it too expensive for something they may just want to take a test drive with.
Back in 2022, when nDreams announced it would be working on a Ghostbusters game (which would become Rise of the Ghost Lord), Wccftech's Alessio Palumbo spoke with nDreams' chief executive officer, Patrick O'Luanaigh, about the upcoming Ghostbusters title, but more importantly, about the future of VR.
When asked about why VR continued to struggle, O'Luanaigh mentioned a few issues with the tech at the time, most of which seemingly have not changed in the four years since we spoke to O'Luanaigh.
"I think it's like a lot of new technologies, when VR first came, there was this huge amount of hype that VR was gonna sell a billion units in the next 24 months, and it was gonna be the biggest thing ever," O'Luanaigh began. "There's a curve, a very well known curve where you have this peak of expectation and there's this massive expectation at the beginning but no new technology ever hits that. Then there's this trough of disillusionments afterward. That's when it gets interesting. It starts to build up and it takes time, and then it becomes a really big thing. It happened with mobile phones and with lots and lots of different types of techs."
"I think the same's true of NFTs and AR, there is a huge, huge hype around these techs at the moment. Everyone's expecting it to be massive. And I think people will be disappointed, but ultimately they'll end up growing. It's just gonna take a lot longer. That's what's happened with VR. It's taken time for the headsets to become good enough, to be honest with you. If you look back at the complexity of setting up the very first Vive and you compare that now to the Quest that you just plug in, charge up and it just works, it works anywhere and it's instant and it's high quality and it's cheap as well. The price of the Quest 2 is very reasonable. I think it's taken a while for that to happen. At the same time, it's taken a while for developers to understand VR, for the budgets to grow enough to be able to do some really big games, like Ghostbusters VR. I think it's a natural thing, most technologies actually take a lot longer to get going than people initially think, and fortunately, we are definitely on that nice upwards curve now."
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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