Meta apparently takes action against VR piracy: Piracy platform goes offline

The by far largest platform for VR piracy has ceased operations. The group, operating under the name "VRPirates", announced the end of its activities on its Discord server.

"Due to a recent DMCA notice from Meta, VRP will be shutting down. As a result, we will no longer accept donations, provide sponsored mirrors, or host content publicly. All related operations are being discontinued effective immediately," it states verbatim.

Meta has not officially confirmed the DMCA takedown notice so far, which is why heise online has asked Meta for a statement.

"Beat Saber" is said to be the reason for the measure

The group's core project was "Rookie Sideloader", a PC program that allowed users to download thousands of VR games to Quest headsets with just one mouse click. The well-organized group was responsible for, among other things, cracking, updating, and providing the games on servers.

The code behind "Rookie Sideloader" is still available on Github, but largely useless without server infrastructure and a team that regularly uploads and maintains content. The group's wiki, which guided users on how to use "Rookie Sideloader", is no longer available online. The Discord server, which is intended to serve purely as a "community server" in the future, is still active. A torrent project by the group was already discontinued in February due to low usage.

In an announcement in the Reddit subforum r/QuestPiracy, a representative of the group provides further details about the DMCA demand. According to this, the illegal hosting of the VR game "Beat Saber" is said to have been the trigger for the takedown request. "Beat Saber" is one of the most successful VR games and is developed by a studio that has belonged to Meta since 2019.

Alarmed by the events, a moderator of the piracy subreddit warns the community of over 100,000 members against posting links to alternative piracy platforms and points out that there is currently no real replacement for "Rookie Sideloader". Apparently, the moderators are also considering discontinuing their activities and closing the subreddit. "We have not made a final decision on whether we will continue long-term or follow VRP. For now, we’re here through at least through April 1st," writes the moderator.

Meta's measure follows a strategic change of course

The extent of piracy on Meta Quest was considerable: some VR developers, whom heise online spoke with in January, estimate that there are up to four illegal downloads for every copy sold. The estimates are based on figures that Meta itself is said to have accidentally released.

VR studios had considered "Rookie Sideloader" a thorn in their side for years because the program enjoyed great popularity and made piracy very easy. This raises the question of why Meta has only reacted now.

The reason could be Meta's radical change of strategy in recent months. For years, the company had competed with independent VR studios: partly through its first-party studios, which released big-budget titles, and partly through its own metaverse platform "Horizon Worlds", which diverted attention from independent developers' games through aggressive marketing and free content.

Both are now history: Meta closed most of its VR studios in January, while Horizon Worlds will soon be separated from the Quest platform and will only be further developed for smartphones in the future. Meta itself has stated several times that the focus is again on strengthening the developer ecosystem. This likely includes protecting their content from piracy more consistently.

Meta is apparently implementing what the crisis-ridden developer community has been demanding for a long time: to abandon metaverse fantasies and reposition Meta Quest more strongly as a gaming console with a strong developer backbone.

(mack)