Facebook Buys Ready At Dawn, The Makers Of The Order: 1886

Ever wondered whether Ready at Dawn, the studio responsible for The Order: 1886 would be following up with a sequel? The answer today is that while they might, chances are it’ll be in VR.

In a blogpost early Tuesday morning, Oculus’s vice president of VR/AR content, Mike Verdu, announced that Ready at Dawn had been acquired by Facebook’s Oculus division. Ready at Dawn, a studio founded by former Naughty Dog and Blizzard staffers, started life by working on titles for Sony platforms, such as Daxter and God of War: Chains of Olympus. The devs branched out into their own AAA experience with The Order: 1886, as well as smaller indie projects like Deformers.

Over the last few years, Ready at Dawn’s focus increasingly shifted to VR development. In 2017 they released Lone Echo, as well as the multiplayer spin-offs Echo Arena and Echo Combat. As part of those games, the company developed their own method for continuous locomotion and full-body inverse kinematics, and it’s that suite of abilities which obviously caught Facebook’s eye.

“As part of the Oculus Studios team, Ready At Dawn will continue creating memorable, immersive, and innovative VR content for gamers around the world as an independently-operated studio,” Verdu said in the blog.

Ready at Dawn’s next project is Echo Dawn 2, although the blog adds that “we are not announcing future projects at this time”. The Echo VR games will continue to be supported on existing platforms, and Verdu’s post notes “Ready At Dawn has exciting plans for future games”.

A Quest port for Echo VR is still in development, with an open beta being made available to all Quest VR users. The studio also noted that the coronavirus pandemic had “greatly impacted” development on Lone Echo 2, although the studio was still aiming for a 2020 release date. Verdu’s blog post, however, did not mention a release.

What will Ready At Dawn be working on as part of Oculus Studios?

The studio is working on Lone Echo II, and we are eager for its launch. We are not announcing future projects at this time.