Developer Impulse Gear announced that its VR hero shooter Larcenauts’ servers will shut down permanently on October 1. The game is expected to be delisted from Steam and the Meta Horizon store soon.
We reviewed Larcenauts when it released in June 2021 and noted some decidedly non-VR interactions that held it back from feeling truly immersive:
Impulse Gear, for example, seems strangely fond of taking control of a player’s hands as a means of imposing restrictions. So when you run with the default option, you see two hands dangling either side, stopping you from firing. When you reload, it’s a canned animation and not something you have any say in.
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Additionally, a high number of the interactions were assigned to button presses. The general sentiment around the game was it had a high level of polish, but did not feel like a VR game.
Larcenauts launched in the wake of popular hero shooters like Overwatch, Apex Legends, and Valorant seeing sky-high player counts during the COVID-19 pandemic, but ultimately failed to capture a large player base. While we do not have the presumably higher Quest statistics, the game reached a peak concurrent player count (an important metric for online shooters) of just forty-two players on Steam, according to Steam Charts.
At the time of this article, Larcenauts is still available for purchase on Steam and Meta Quest, but it should be removed from both platforms soon.
