Meta backs new studio from Arkane Austin’s former VR lead
The former head of VR at Arkane Austin has founded a new game studio called Cire Games with financial support from Meta.
Eric Beyhl, former Head of VR and Lead Art Outsource Manager at Arkane Austin, is setting out on a new chapter with the founding of Cire Games. The new studio is supported by Meta’s “Oculus Publishing Ignition” initiative, as Beyhl shared in a recent LinkedIn post.
Cire Games isn’t limiting itself to just virtual reality. Beyhl says the studio’s goal is to “serve as many platforms as possible in the future.” To get things started, he’s brought on board some former colleagues, trusted external partners, and a handful of new faces for the studio’s first project.
Beyhl spent over a decade at Arkane, first as the lead environment artist on Prey and later as the VR lead for Prey’s Typhon Hunter expansion.
Meta Steps Up Support for VR Startups Amid Industry Layoffs
Cire Games comes into existence on the heels of Arkane Austin’s closure — one of several internal studios shuttered by Microsoft last year. “Ignition was designed to help bootstrap young startups formed in the midst of the game industry’s ongoing mass layoffs, and the timing could not have been better,” Beyhl says.
Meta introduced the Oculus Publishing Ignition program at GDC 2024, positioning it as a safety net for VR developers caught in the current wave of industry cuts. According to analyst Matthew Ball, the games industry has seen more than 27,000 job losses since 2022 — a number that continues to climb.
The VR sector hasn’t been immune, either: studios like First Contact Entertainment have closed their doors, while Sony has both shut down its London Studio and downsized at Firesprite — two teams with deep VR roots. The layoff list doesn’t end there: Toast Interactive, nDreams, Fast Travel Games, Soul Assembly, and XR Games have all been forced to cut staff and restructure. Even Meta itself has pulled the plug on Ready at Dawn, once seen as one of its most promising VR studios.
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