The team behind SideQuest, Quest’s alternative app library, announced it’s bringing Microsoft’s social VR platform AltspaceVR (2015) back from the dead.
The News
Initially released in 2015 and then acquired by 2017 by Microsoft, Altspace was one of the first successful social VR platforms, launching across PC VR headsets, Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Go, and both Quest and Quest 2.
In early 2023 however, Microsoft announced it was shuttering Altspace in a bid to shuttle resources to its cloud-based mixed reality collaboration platform, Microsoft Mesh, which was subsequently deprecated in 2025 and parted out to Microsoft Teams.
Now, SideQuest CEO and founder Shane Harris reveals in a Reddit post the company has acquired the rights to the Altspace name, noting it will be “a brand new Altspace” for a modern audience as well as “a spiritual successor to the Altspace we know and love and capture what made it great.”
Check out Altspace’s final moment below, courtesy ‘Vitua Zone’:
Harris reveals SideQuest will be re-launching Altspace with many of the same features and functionality the app had circa 2016-2017, further noting he’s assembled a team of previous Altspace staffers and “some of the most prolific OG players” to help shape the platform.
One such re-hire is Christian Boe, the original concept designer behind the original robots in Altspace, which were discontinued in favor of human-only avatars, which means the new Altspace will most definitely feature robot avatars of some sort in addition to custom avatars, Harris says.
Harris maintains we’ll hear regular updates and developer insight in the coming weeks and months.
My Take
Altspace likely shut down for a myriad of reasons, although one of the biggest is it never actually monetized; in its eight years of existence the platform never featured an in-world economy or creator marketplace, and its avatar system was decidedly much more ‘off the shelf’ than something like VRChat, which lets you upload, sell, or style your avatar in any way imaginable.
Starting Altspace back up, and importantly employing those people who helped define the platform in the first place, is a giant win, although being able to pick up where they left off and find an economic model that benefits both players and creators alike will be a tall order.
Still, there must be some contingent of VR-using Rec Room refugees out there looking for a platform that isn’t VRChat, and Altspace may try to fill that gap. Whatever the case, getting back to its roots means putting on a lot of events to attract regular users.
For all of the team’s know-how though, relaunching Altspace is roughly like starting from scratch with the new generation of younger players, as even in 2023 Altspace had waned a lot since its heyday in 2016-2017. I’d like to hope they can also attract back a bulk of the OG users too looking for that socially tame sweet spot Altspace seemed to fill so well.
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