You may have heard that Facebook-owned Beat Games is “sunsetting” its Beat Saber VR license for out-of-home locations as of July 31 to focus on the consumer market. While true, that doesn’t mean the end of Beat Saber in arcades.
A Facebook rep told Android Central: “We found with the Beat Games team over time that involvement in customizing content for LBE arcades was taking the team’s focus away from the consumer product and their efforts to bring numerous exciting new artist collaborations to life in Beat Saber music packs throughout the year.”
However, VRsenal obtained a distribution license from Beat Games before its November 2019 Facebook acquisition, which gives their VR cabinet purchasers a perpetual, prepaid license to operate Beat Saber indefinitely.
“If you own a Beat Saber cabinet from VRsenal, you will continue to run Beat Saber, royalty-free, forever,” VRsenal wrote. “We are aware that other companies distributing Beat Saber to LBE have been issued takedown notices. They include Springboard VR, Synthesis VR, Control VR and others that distribute software to VR arcades. All of these locations have received instructions to remove Beat Saber from their platforms by July 31, 2020. Those are different licenses. They are pay-per-minute royalty licenses, not prepaid perpetual licenses like VRsenal’s.”
The company added that it believes Facebook will give them some kind of termination notice in the near future, stopping their right to distribute new copies of Beat Saber on their VR cabinet platform. If and when that happens, VRsenal will stop selling new Beat Saber units. The company is emphatic that: “This will not impact anyone who already owns, purchases or has committed to purchase a Beat Saber VR cabinet from VRsenal or its authorized distributors prior to VRsenal receiving this notice.”
They continued: “One of the benefits of this move by Facebook, if you happen to own a VRsenal Beat Saber cabinet, is you will now be part of a very small, exclusive group of locations that can still offer the game in an out-of-home venue. We encourage all of our customers to use this leverage in their local marketing. Beat Saber is a once-in-a-generation music game. Now you can use it to “beat” your competition.”
Go to www.beatsaber.com for more information about the game and feel free to contact Susan Montanaro for more information – [email protected].
