The Houseparty’s over.
The team behind the group hangout app announced Thursday that its curfew had long since passed, and that the app will no longer work as of October. Houseparty, which allowed participants to play various games while hemorrhaging personal data, is to be pulled from app stores “immediately.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s goodnight. Epic Games bought Houseparty back in 2019, and apparently has some vague plans for the team that built it.
“The team behind Houseparty is working on creating new ways to have meaningful and authentic social interactions at metaverse scale across the Epic Games family,” reads the statement in part.
As to what that means, exactly — who knows? We reached out to Houseparty to figure out if that statement is anything other than tech-speak for the end stages of an acqui-hire, but received no immediate response.
The metaverse, for those stuck in meatspace, is a loosely defined term coined by the science fiction author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash. It’s become a bit of a cause célèbre among members of the tech set, like billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, who for some reason seem intent on advancing a fundamentally dystopian vision.
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“While Houseparty may be going away,” continues the statement, “we hope that the memories you’ve made will last a lifetime.”
Like with any house party, we somehow doubt the memories will even make it through the night.
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