Rec Room’s Value Balloons; A New Wave of Crowdfunded VR Headsets

Rec Room raised another $145 million in a round led by Coatue Management today, shooting its valuation up to $3.5 billion. It crystallizes Rec Room’s status as a real metaverse contender. Competitors like Roblox and Meta’s Horizon Worlds should be taking notes.

Since its launch as a VR-only game in 2016, Rec Room has gradually become a creator-driven platform available across headsets, game consoles and mobile devices. Expanding across devices has helped Rec Room double its lifetime number of users to over 37 million, up from 15 million earlier this year. Mobile has particularly helped Rec Room’s user numbers soar—it’s the benefit of going where the users are, something Roblox also enjoys.