Houseparty, the social video chat app acquired by Fortnite maker Epic Games for $ 35 million in 2019, is being retired. The company says Houseparty will be discontinued in October if the app stops working for its existing users. however, it is being pulled from the app stores today. In connection with this move, Epic Games’ “Fortnite Mode” feature, which Houseparty used to enable video chat for Fortnite players, will also be discontinued.
Founded in 2015, Houseparty offered users the opportunity to join group video chats with friends and even play games like Uno, Trivia, Heads Up and others. Last year, Epic Games incorporated Houseparty into Fortnite to first allow players to see live feeds from friends while playing, and then later to support livestream gameplay right inside Houseparty. Back then, these integrations seemed to be the end goal, which explained why Epic Games bought the social startup in the first place.
Now, a little over two years after the acquisition was announced and less than half a year since support for live streaming in the app, Houseparty is closing.
The company didn’t provide solid insight into what at first glance feels like an admission not to capitalize on its acquisition. But the reality is that Epic Games may have something bigger in store than just video chat. That said, all Epic Games would say today is that the Houseparty team was no longer able to pay the app the attention it needed – a statement indicating a decision by the executive branch to shift the team’s focus to other matters.
While none of the Houseparty team members will be fired due to this move, we are told they will join other teams where they will work on new ways to enable “social interactions” across the Epic Games family of products. The company’s announcement indicated that these social functions would be designed and built on a “metaverse scale”.
The “metaverse” is an increasingly used buzzword that refers to a shared virtual environment as provided by major online gaming platforms such as Fortnite, Roblox, and others. Facebook also claims the Metaverse is the next big move for social networks, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg describing it as “the embodied internet you’re on, not just seeing.”
To some extent, Fortnite has started to embrace the metaverse by offering non-gaming experiences like online concerts that you attend as your avatar and other live events. Before it closed, Houseparty also played with live events that users would follow along with their friends and attend.
An Epic Games spokesperson tells ProWellTech that the Houseparty team has worked (and continues to work) on a number of other projects that focus on social networking. But some of the “multiple, larger projects” Epic Games has in the works remain known to us.
In terms of social products, Houseparty’s technology now supports all Fortnite voice chat, and the features they have developed are available to developers for free through Epic Games Services. They also worked on creating new social experiences, ranging from the RSVP social features for Fortnite’s global events, like the recent Ariana Grande concert, to the upcoming Operation: Sky Fire event for shared quests and other game mechanics . More social functionality and new experiences are also being built into Fortnite’s user-generated content platform, Create mode.
It may seem strange to close an app that saw its usage spike only last year due to the pandemic, but it seems that the COVID bump had no stamina.
At the height of the lockdown, Houseparty had reported that it had won 50 million new signups in a month as users sought video apps to connect with family and friends while the world was off. But as the pandemic progressed, other video chat experiences gained traction. Established as an indispensable tool for remote work, Zoom also became a tool for hanging out with friends after work. Facebook also started eating house party lunches with its debut drop-in video chat “Rooms” last year, which offered a similar group video experience. And bored users switched to audio-based social networks in apps like Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces.
Photo credits: Apptopia
According to data from Apptopia, Houseparty has been in steady decline since the pandemic bump. To date, the app has recorded a total of 111 million downloads on iOS and Android, the majority (63 million) on iOS. The United States was Houseparty’s largest market with 43.4% of downloads, followed by the United Kingdom (9.8%) and Germany (5.6%).
Meanwhile, Epic Games said the app served “tens of millions” of users worldwide. It insists that the closure was not decided lightly, nor was the decision made to close “Fortnite Mode” due to a lack of acceptance.
Houseparty will notify users of the shutdown via in-app notifications before the final closure in October. At this point, Fortnite mode will also no longer be available.
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