Interact XR, which you would possibly know as Immersive VR Schooling, is shutting down and prospects don’t know when it’ll go darkish or how they’ll get their content material out. That’s a giant warning signal for anybody utilizing proprietary digital actuality platforms — and digital world platforms as nicely.
OpenSim customers can export OAR and IAR information and choose up the place they left off in one other grid, or in their very own, non-public grid. You’ll be able to’t normally try this when you use industrial platforms constructed on high of proprietary know-how — and a reminder that when you do use such a platform, you could have a migration plan in place.
We wrote in regards to the firm earlier than. In 2015, it was raising money on Kickstarter for an Apollo 11 experience and the fundraiser was profitable. It beat its objective.
That developed into the digital actuality schooling platform, which we additionally wrote about.
“All options can be found at no cost,” spokeswoman Jen Archibald told Hypergrid Business back in 2016.
And prospects confirmed up, together with Financial institution of America, College of Miami, Optima Ed, logistics big Kuehne + Nagel, Adtalem International Schooling, and different main organizations.
At its peak in 2022, the corporate had practically 4 million euros in income. Additionally that 12 months, Meta Immersive Studying funded VictoryXR to construct 10 digital-twin university campuses on Interact’s proprietary platform. The thought was that customers would entry the platform with Meta’s VR headsets. And Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education featured a 2022 session on teaching languages in EngageXR.
In 2024, the corporate reported that it had round 18,000 licensed customers.
However revenues fell to under 2 million euros in 2025 and, final week, the corporate announced its liquidation after its largest buyer, which had renewed solely in Could, mentioned it “is not going to be taking any licences going ahead.”
We’ve seen this occur earlier than. AltspaceVR took its users’ worlds down with it in 2023, and Rec Room shut down this past June after 150 million gamers and $294 million in funding.
After all, OpenSim grids go down as nicely, and never all grids permit OAR or IAR exports. OARs, by the way in which, are area archive information, and embody the land and every part on it. IARs are person stock archive information.
I’m all the time reminding folks to have an exit technique and to maintain good backups. If a grid doesn’t permit backups, watch out in regards to the effort and time and cash you make investments. I like to recommend doing all of your builds in a separate atmosphere — like an area OpenSim set up — after which importing it to the grid. That manner, you all the time have an area backup of your work.
Rec Room didn’t let customers obtain working copies of their rooms, however did permit them to export room and different knowledge in codecs suitable with different instruments, resembling Unity, permitting them to doubtlessly rebuild their work on different platforms.
In the meantime, not less than certainly one of Interact XR’s prospects received out. Optima was capable of migrate its entire content material library, the company said last week, and CEO Adam Mangana mentioned the transfer means “we retain possession of the mental property we’ve got created.”
Optima migrated to Arthur, one other proprietary platform.
