Immersive education and training platform Engage XR shutting down

VR distant coaching. (Picture courtesy Interact VR.)

Interact XR, which you would possibly know as Immersive VR Schooling, is shutting down and clients don’t know when it can go darkish or how they’ll get their content material out. That’s an enormous warning signal for anybody utilizing proprietary digital actuality platforms — and digital world platforms as nicely.

OpenSim customers can export OAR and IAR information and decide up the place they left off in one other grid, or in their very own, non-public grid. You possibly can’t normally do this if you happen to use industrial platforms constructed on prime of proprietary know-how — and a reminder that if you happen to do use such a platform, it’s essential to have a migration plan in place.

We wrote concerning the firm earlier than. In 2015, it was raising money on Kickstarter for an Apollo 11 experience and the fundraiser was profitable. It beat its purpose.

That advanced into the digital actuality schooling platform, which we additionally wrote about.

“All options can be found without cost,” spokeswoman Jen Archibald told Hypergrid Business back in 2016.

And clients confirmed up, together with Financial institution of America, College of Miami, Optima Ed, logistics large Kuehne + Nagel, Adtalem World Schooling, and different main organizations.

At its peak in 2022, the corporate had almost 4 million euros in income. Additionally that yr, Meta Immersive Studying funded VictoryXR to construct 10 digital-twin university campuses on Interact’s proprietary platform. The concept was that customers would entry the platform with Meta’s VR headsets. And Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education featured a 2022 session on teaching languages in EngageXR.

In 2024, the corporate reported that it had round 18,000 licensed customers.

However revenues fell to under 2 million euros in 2025 and, final week, the corporate announced its liquidation after its largest buyer, which had renewed solely in Might, stated it “won’t be taking any licences going ahead.”

We’ve seen this occur earlier than. AltspaceVR took its users’ worlds down with it in 2023, and Rec Room shut down this past June after 150 million gamers and $294 million in funding.

After all, OpenSim grids go down as nicely, and never all grids enable OAR or IAR exports. OARs, by the way in which, are area archive information, and embrace the land and every part on it. IARs are consumer stock archive information.

I’m all the time reminding individuals to have an exit technique and to maintain good backups. If a grid doesn’t enable backups, watch out concerning the effort and time and cash you make investments. I like to recommend doing all of your builds in a separate surroundings — like a neighborhood OpenSim set up — after which importing it to the grid. That method, you all the time have a neighborhood backup of your work.

Rec Room didn’t let customers obtain working copies of their rooms, however did enable them to export room and different information in codecs appropriate with different instruments, resembling Unity, permitting them to probably rebuild their work on different platforms.

In the meantime, at the least one in all Interact XR’s clients bought out. Optima was capable of migrate its entire content material library, the company said last week, and CEO Adam Mangana stated the transfer means “we retain possession of the mental property we have now created.”

Optima migrated to Arthur, one other proprietary platform.