Highlights
- Meta cut staff at Camouflaj, the developer of Batman: Arkham Shadow, but the studio remains open.
- Meta shut three VR studios while reducing its VR games business and prioritizing wearables.
- Camouflaj now has a small team and no active game projects.
Meta has laid off staff at Camouflaj, the virtual reality (VR) developer best known for Batman: Arkham Shadow, as part of a wider round of job cuts across its Reality Labs division. A Meta spokesperson confirmed to Kotaku that Camouflaj was affected but said the studio is not shutting down.
The layoffs follow Meta’s decision this week to close three other VR-focused studios under Reality Labs: Sanzaru Games, Twisted Pixel Games, and Armature Studio. The cuts are part of a broader reduction impacting roughly 10% of Meta’s VR and AR (augmented reality)-focused workforce, with overall layoffs affecting about 10K employees company-wide.
Meta Reality Labs Layoffs Shift Focus Away From VR Games
In a statement provided to Game Developer, a Meta spokesperson said, “We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables,” adding, “This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year.”
According to reporting by Aftermath, Camouflaj is now made up of “just a handful of employees” working on the user experience for upcoming hardware. Sources told the outlet that studio heads were let go and that active game projects were shut down.
The same sources said a sequel to Batman: Arkham Shadow had been in development at Sanzaru rather than Camouflaj, but that project ended when Sanzaru was closed.
Camouflaj, founded in 2011, previously released Republique in 2013 and Iron Man VR in 2020, before working on Batman: Arkham Shadow.
Several affected employees have posted publicly about the layoffs. “I was a part of the recent Meta layoffs that hit Camouflaj,” senior animator Kaitlin S. wrote on LinkedIn, reflecting on more than a decade at the studio.
Former Cinematic and Level Designer Jordan Pearson also said he was impacted by the layoffs, describing his progression from intern to leading cinematic design on Batman: Arkham Shadow and thanking the Camouflaj team.
The cuts add to continued losses at Meta’s Reality Labs division, which reported a $4.5 billion USD operating loss for the second quarter (Q2) ended Jun. 30, 2025, marking at least the third Reality Labs-specific layoff round since 2024.
