VREAL
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| VREAL | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Industry | Virtual reality, game streaming |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Founder | Todd Hooper |
| Headquarters | Seattle, Washington, United States |
| Notable Personnel | Todd Hooper (founder and CEO) |
| Products | Vreal (VR game streaming and replay platform) |
| Website | https://vreal.net |
VREAL (later written Vreal) was a Seattle-based startup that built a streaming and replay platform for virtual reality games. Instead of sending viewers a flat video, it re-rendered a streamer's game session so that viewers wearing a headset could stand inside the game world, move around it and watch from any position.[1][2] The company was founded in 2015 by Todd Hooper, a former vice president of online at Unity Technologies, and raised about 15 million US dollars in venture capital.[1][3]
Vreal was released on Steam as a free Early Access application in June 2018 and let viewers watch recorded sessions of supported games such as GORN and SUPERHOT from inside the game.[4] The company shut down in August 2019, saying that "the VR market never developed as quickly as we all had hoped".[5][6]
History
Founding and early plans (2015-2016)
Hooper had been vice president of online at Unity Technologies, where, according to Fortune, he saw gameplay grow into entertainment through Twitch and YouTube. He told the magazine in April 2016: "There are more people watching games on Twitch and YouTube than playing games today."[1] The company's own site later described itself as "Former home of Vreal 2015-2019", and TechCrunch also gives 2015 as the founding year.[7][3]
In press coverage of 27 April 2016 VREAL said it had raised 3.3 million US dollars from investors.[8] Fortune named the investors as Upfront Ventures, Vulcan Capital, Presence Capital, IT Farm, Dawn Patrol Ventures and angel investors from Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area.[1] The company planned to support the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Google Cardboard, said it was a Sony PlayStation partner, and intended to add PlayStation VR later. Hooper told Fortune that VREAL had met more than 50 game studios at the Game Developers Conference in March 2016, that the first integrated games would be named at E3 in June, and that a beta would follow in late summer 2016. Its demos at the time ran on Surgeon Simulator and Cloudlands: VR Minigolf.[1] Developers working in Unity or Unreal Engine were to integrate the VREAL technology into their games.[8]
The 2016 plan had several viewing tiers. Owners of PC headsets could enter a stream as an avatar and interact with the streamer and other viewers; viewers on mobile headsets would watch through cloud rendering without an avatar; and people on ordinary 2D screens could also watch.[1][8] The company's 2016 website added virtual cameras for 2D streams and 360 video output for mobile VR, and said streamers would be able to "pass the mic" or hand in-game items to viewers.[9]
Series A and Early Access (2018)
On 7 February 2018 Vreal announced an 11.7 million US dollar Series A round led by Axioma Ventures, with new investors Intel Capital and the Akatsuki Entertainment Technology Fund. The round brought its total funding to about 15 million US dollars.[10] Existing investors Upfront Ventures and Vulcan Capital also took part; GamesBeat additionally listed CRCM Ventures among the returning investors.[10] Chet Faliszek, a former member of Valve's VR team who was then a studio head at Bossa Studios, joined the board to represent Axioma, as did Chris M. Williams, founder and CEO of the children's media company pocket.watch.[11][10] Vreal had 24 employees at the time.[11]
When the round was announced the service was in a closed, pre-alpha test and worked only with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. UploadVR named its initial game integrations as GORN, Arizona Sunshine, Surgeon Simulator and SUPERHOT.[2][11] Hooper was cautious about the market, telling GamesBeat that "It's difficult for VR companies to make a business in 2018" and that the company did not expect significant revenue that year; advertising, subscriptions and tips were under consideration as revenue models.[10]
Vreal was released on Steam as a free Early Access application on 27 June 2018, with VREAL Inc as developer and publisher. The Steam page said the company was "targeting 2020 for a full release" and that Vreal "will be free at launch and will always offer a free tier", with paid features planned later. The store page said Vreal supported "dozens of games", naming Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, Tilt Brush, GORN, SUPERHOT and Mosh Pit Simulator.[4] On Steam the app centred on recorded content: creators played a supported game and published the recording, and viewers watched it from inside the game.[4][12]
Desktop viewing and shutdown (2019)
In January 2019 Vreal added a Desktop Mode so people without a headset could watch Vreal content on a PC, moving through the game world with the keyboard and mouse alongside friends who were in VR.[13] TechCrunch reported that an experimental web browser view followed about two months before the shutdown.[3]
In early August 2019 the company replaced its homepage with a post titled "Moving on to new realities...". It said that "the VR market never developed as quickly as we all had hoped, and we were definitely ahead of our time", that Vreal was "shutting down operations", and that its Discord server would stay open for about a week.[5][6] UploadVR noted that the closure came about 18 months after the Series A.[6] In TechCrunch's assessment, the need for VR hardware on both the broadcasting and the viewing side had limited the audience, and the browser view arrived too late to change that.[3] The Steam store page now states that Vreal is no longer available on the store.[4] As of October 2026, vreal.net shows only the line "Former home of Vreal 2015-2019. Thanks for the memories!"[7]
Products
Vreal platform
The core idea, described in both the 2016 press coverage and the 2018 funding coverage, was to re-render the game itself rather than stream video. TechCrunch explained in 2018 that each viewer got their own vantage point in a shared world and could drop in as an avatar, stand next to the streamer or watch from a bird's-eye view.[2] UploadVR reported that the system captured the environment, player movement, interactions and voices, so a session could be replayed later, alone or with others, or watched live by invisible spectators.[11] GamesBeat described a social lobby where users could teleport, watch movies, enter games and resize their avatars, and virtual cameras that could be placed in a scene to produce a fixed 2D feed for viewers without headsets.[10]
In mid-2018 the company's website listed six capabilities:[14]
| Feature | Company description |
|---|---|
| Native VR | "Share your VR experiences in VR" |
| VR Replay | "Record and revisit past experiences" |
| VR Simulcast | "Create multi-hosted experiences in VR" |
| 2D | "Set up cameras to broadcast to 2D platforms" |
| 360 Video | "Record streams in 360 degrees" |
| Mixed Reality | "Simplify and enhance your MR capture" (see mixed reality capture) |
By May 2019 the homepage promoted watching "a GORN fight from the stands", zooming around the battlefield in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator and finding the secret weapons in SUPERHOT.[12]
Patent
Hooper and Dan Rubenfield are the inventors on US patent 9,616,338, "Virtual reality session capture and replay systems and methods", originally assigned to Vreal Inc. It was filed on 17 August 2016, claims priority to 29 February 2016, and was granted on 11 April 2017. The patent describes capturing the graphics engine function calls and other object data, including positional data, that a VR device generates during a session, and building a modified session data stream from them so that the session can be replayed from a "third person" spectator perspective that can be selected and changed during the replay. Google Patents records an assignment of the patent to Roblox Corporation on 9 October 2023 and lists its status as expired for non-payment of fees.[15]
Funding
| Round | Announced | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Initial funding | April 2016 | 3.3 million US dollars | Upfront Ventures, Vulcan Capital, Presence Capital, IT Farm, Dawn Patrol Ventures, angel investors[1] |
| Series A | 7 February 2018 | 11.7 million US dollars | Axioma Ventures (lead), Intel Capital, Akatsuki Entertainment Technology Fund, Upfront Ventures, Vulcan Capital[11][10] |
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 John Gaudiosi (2016-04-27). "This Startup Wants to be the Twitch of Virtual Reality". Fortune. https://fortune.com/2016/04/27/vreal-launching-virtual-reality-game-livestreaming-platform/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Lucas Matney (2018-02-07). "Virtual reality live-streaming startup Vreal raises $11.7M". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/07/virtual-reality-live-streaming-startup-vreal-raises-11-7m/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Lucas Matney (2019-08-07). "Virtual reality game-streaming platform Vreal shuts down". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/07/virtual-reality-game-streaming-platform-vreal-shuts-down/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Vreal on Steam". Steam. Valve. https://store.steampowered.com/app/440120/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Moving on to new realities...". Vreal. 2019-08. http://web.archive.org/web/20190821035701/https://vreal.net/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Ian Hamilton (2019-08-06). "Vreal VR Broadcasting Startup Shuts Down". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/vreal-closes-shuts-down/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Vreal". Vreal. https://vreal.net/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Alex Wawro (2016-04-27). "VReal aims to be like Twitch, but for VR game livestreaming". Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/vreal-aims-to-be-like-twitch-but-for-vr-game-livestreaming. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ "About - VREAL". VREAL. 2016. http://web.archive.org/web/20160527145351/http://www.vreal.net:80/about/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Dean Takahashi (2018-02-07). "Vreal raises $11.7 million for VR streaming platform". GamesBeat. https://gamesbeat.com/vreal-raises-11-7-million-for-vr-streaming-platform/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 Ian Hamilton (2018-02-07). "Vreal Raises $11.7 Million For VR Broadcasting Platform". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/vreal-series-a-broadcast/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 "Home - Vreal". Vreal. 2019. http://web.archive.org/web/20190530070643/https://vreal.net/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ "VReal Add Desktop Mode to their VR Streaming Service". GameFromScratch. 2019-01-31. https://gamefromscratch.com/vreal-add-desktop-mode-to-their-vr-streaming-service/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ "About - VREAL". VREAL. 2018. http://web.archive.org/web/20180603062557/http://vreal.net:80/about/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
- ↑ "US9616338B1 - Virtual reality session capture and replay systems and methods". Google Patents. https://patents.google.com/patent/US9616338B1/en. Retrieved 2026-10-21.