Epic Games kills Houseparty video chat app

House party, the video chat application that Epic Games purchased and integrated into its Fortnite gaming experience, will close soon, the company announced Thursday.

The platform, which was purchased by Epic in 2019, allows multiple people to interact through a video call. The platform’s popularity soared when covid-19 forced global lockdowns, with some 17 million downloads in March 2020, the month when the pandemic really started. In April, the application team announcement integration with Fortnite, allowing players of the iconic Battle Royale game to chat while playing and broadcast their sessions.

However, the The company now says it’s time to put the party to bed, saying it can no longer “give the app or our community the attention it deserves” as it grapples with other projects. As a result, Houseparty will be removed from the app stores “immediately”. For those who have already downloaded the app, it will remain functional until it is officially retired in October. Likewise, the functionality of the application with Fortnite the gameplay will also remain intact until this period. The notifications integrated into the application will ultimately serve to alert users when the service is no longer available.

While we have to say goodbye to Houseparty, its parent company has promised to develop some cool new stuff to replace the soon-to-be-gone product. “So what’s the next step? The team behind Houseparty is working to create new ways to have meaningful and authentic social interactions at the metaverse scale through the Epic Games family, ” the company said.

Ah, yes, the metaverse, Silicon Valley’s new gadget to spark interest in the virtual and augmented reality markets. For game developers like Epic, virtual reality and augmented reality are clearly common sense investments, given their potential to totally transform the user’s gaming experience. On this front, Epic has apparently prepared aggressively, raising $ 1 billion last year to invest in such new meta-projects, the Washington Post reports.