Kluge Interactive

Kluge Interactive
Information
Industry	Video games, virtual reality
Founded	2008
Founder	Arturo Perez
Headquarters	Los Angeles, California, United States (fully remote team)
Notable Personnel	Arturo Perez (CEO), Abraham Aguero (Creative Director), Daniel Garcia (COO), Cameron Wood (CAO)
Products	Synth Riders, Final Fury
Website	https://klugeinteractive.com

Kluge Interactive is an American video game studio, founded in Los Angeles, that makes virtual reality games. It is best known as the developer and publisher of the VR rhythm game Synth Riders, which entered Steam Early Access in July 2018, and it also makes the VR fighting game Final Fury. The studio began as a design agency building websites, apps and brand identities for clients before it moved into VR around 2016 and 2017.

Besides its own games, Kluge has worked as a contract studio for Meta, building games for Horizon Worlds. In April 2026 its CEO, Arturo Perez, confirmed layoffs that halved the team from a peak of about 100 people to 50.

Reviewed 15 October 2026. Founding dates, founders and staff roles, Synth Riders and Final Fury release dates and platforms, Horizon Worlds work and the 2025-2026 layoffs checked against every cited source. About review dates.

History

Design studio origins

Kluge's own site says the company was "Founded in 2008", while the biography of founder and CEO Arturo Perez on the same page says he founded it in 2007. A 2023 profile on Meta's Quest blog also gives 2007, and an UploadVR interview from the same year says Kluge began as a design studio in 2008. According to Meta's profile, the company started in the Los Angeles tech scene as a design studio building websites, apps and brand identities, with mid-market business and enterprise clients.

Perez is originally from Venezuela. Meta's profile says that in 2010 he asked his cousin to recommend a website vendor, which is how he met Abraham Aguero, now Kluge's creative director. Aguero had founded his own digital agency in Venezuela, and the two later merged their businesses. Daniel Garcia (now COO) and Cameron Wood (now CAO) both joined in 2012.

The name comes from Perez's earlier venture. In a post on the studio's blog, he writes that he ran a music magazine called Kludge Magazine for five years until 2003, and that he later picked "Kluge" while searching for a name for a new creative technology studio.

Move into virtual reality

Aguero's company biography says he created a series of mobile VR experiences in late 2016. Perez told UploadVR that the studio "started building mobile VR and made a little game called Max, which had about 100 players." In 2017 the team decided to make something of its own and turned to VR, with Aguero leading the work. Synth Riders started as one of three prototypes that Kluge showed prospective clients to demonstrate its skills; when one client wanted a futuristic cyberpunk look, Perez thought Synth Riders was the right fit. Aguero told Meta that the company "kept the entire team and trained them to start doing VR stuff."

Synth Riders

Synth Riders went into Early Access for PC VR in July 2018. Meta's profile says the game first launched on the Oculus Rift platform. The full release on PC VR and the Oculus Quest version were both scheduled for 31 October 2019; an update to a Road to VR report on 1 November 2019 confirmed that the game had left Early Access and was live on the Quest store. Both the developer and publisher on the game's Steam listing are Kluge Interactive.

Kluge then ported the game to other headsets. The PlayStation VR version had been due on 27 July 2021 but slipped to 10 August 2021; the studio blamed "an unavoidable, last-minute issue with the distribution that's outside of our control." A remastered edition for PlayStation VR2 was released on 22 February 2023 as a free upgrade for everyone who owned the game on PlayStation, adding controller haptic feedback and headset rumble on wall contact. A mixed reality update arrived on 12 October 2023 for Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 3. It opens a portal in the player's wall through which the game world appears, and Kluge said it was best experienced with the color passthrough of the Quest Pro and Quest 3.

A rebuilt version for Apple Vision Pro launched through Apple Arcade on 2 February 2024, the headset's release day. Because the headset has no motion controllers, this version uses hand tracking. Apple named it a finalist in the Spatial Computing category of the 2024 Apple Design Awards, listing the developer under the company name Kluge Strategic Inc.

On 15 December 2025 Kluge released a non-VR version of Synth Riders for Nintendo Switch. It was announced as Synth Riders: Overdrive, but the subtitle was dropped before launch to keep the name consistent across platforms. It replaces motion controls with dual analog sticks and a third-person camera, drops the workout element, and adds a campaign plus four-player versus and co-op modes. Perez called the move "a strategic expansion that's core to our DNA."

Horizon Worlds and other platforms

Kluge has publicly announced that it works closely with Meta on games for Horizon Worlds, and Meta's July 2023 profile said the studio had spent the previous two years building Horizon Worlds games. In a blog post whose title calls BeatBlocks the studio's first Roblox game, Perez wrote that since 2021 Kluge had made "over 15 games (including Giant Paddle Mini Golf)" with Meta and had built the Horizon world for Meta Connect in the two preceding years.

Final Fury

Final Fury is a one-on-one VR fighting game inspired by arcade fighters such as Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Aguero told UploadVR in 2023 that the team had spent more than a year prototyping its feel. Nine-time EVO champion Justin Wong consulted on the game. It entered Early Access on 8 May 2025 for Quest 2 and later Quest headsets and for PC VR on Steam, priced at US$9.99, with six fighters, an Arcade Mode, and cross-platform online play using rollback netcode. As of October 2026 its Steam store page still labels it an Early Access game.

2025-2026 layoffs

In a statement reported in April 2026, Perez said: "I can confirm that we had major rounds of layoffs in December and January." He said the studio was "currently a team of 50 from a peak of 100 last year" and that "Synth Riders remains steady but not enough to support our full studio." The original report, by Brad Lynch via UploadVR, attributed the cuts primarily to Meta stopping VR support for Horizon Worlds, a platform Kluge had publicly partnered with Meta to build games for; Perez did not say whether the layoffs resulted from that decision.

Games

Title	Release	Platforms	Notes
Max	Not documented	Mobile VR	Early mobile VR game; Perez said it had about 100 players
Synth Riders	2018 (Early Access); 31 October 2019 (full release)	PC VR, Oculus Quest, PlayStation VR (2021), PlayStation VR2 (2023), Apple Vision Pro (2024)	VR rhythm game
Synth Riders (Switch)	15 December 2025	Nintendo Switch	Non-VR version with analog stick controls
Horizon Worlds games	2021 onward	Horizon Worlds	Over 15 games made with Meta, according to Perez, including Giant Paddle Mini Golf
BeatBlocks	Not documented	Roblox	The studio's first Roblox game
Final Fury	8 May 2025 (Early Access)	Meta Quest, PC VR (Steam)	VR fighting game

Clients

The studio's About page lists Deloitte, Samsung, Meta, Foursquare, LA County, The North Face, Caltech and Activision among its partners. Kluge says its staff work fully remotely from the United States, Europe, Latin America and Australia.

See also

• Synth Riders
• Horizon Worlds
• Meta Connect