AltSpaceVR will be re-launching as a new SocialVR platform this fall. Shane Harris, the founder of SideQuest is responsible.

Shane participated in a Q&A and goes into some details about how it came about, and how someone else attempted to jump on the opportunity before him. Leading to a delay in announcing the project.

Video: Alt-Space Reboot with Shane Harris & @Christian (concept artist)
Channel: BerryNiceCreative · Published: 2026-08-03 · Runtime: 2:00:35

Transcript below is from the video’s auto-captions. I did my best to clean it up.

[42:54] (question from chat: “How did you come at this direction to get all this back up?”)

[Shane Harris]
[42:57] I will tell you very honestly: there’s a guy called Danny Mac — last year, around March, he announced on social media that he was the CEO of Altspace and that he was rebirthing the platform.

[43:18] Danny actually hooked into something. Fair play to him, you know — he was able to identify that Microsoft had allowed, or willfully cancelled, the Altspace trademark, right? After they had sunset the platform, around a year later they cancelled their trademarks in the US, and he got on it, in all fairness to him.

[43:45] I was kind of monitoring that situation, as many of the people in this server, I’m sure, also were. And there were some early signs there that suggested there was a possibility that his motivations may not have been as genuine.

[44:02] And yeah, I think it was kind of a combination of how ambitious these plans were, with very little experience — and also there was a very early focus on crypto integration.

[44:22] I see everything in its own place. I think the technology behind crypto and Bitcoin and all this stuff — I think it’s amazing. It works really well. But it’s also got a high potential for abuse, right? And we’ve seen that at every level, right? Whether it’s Trump coin or Hawk coin or whatever it is, right? The idea of a pump and dump, where a lot of people can lose a lot of money — and in a lot of cases their life savings. Those are real issues.

[45:00] And it kind of resonated with me, because I, like many of you, I’ve got a pretty strong attachment to this brand. I spent many years feeling the presence of being there while all this was going on.

[45:14] So I jumped into action to see if there was something I could do to try to take over what he was doing, right? In all honesty — so that maybe I could try and better represent you guys, and all of us, as collective motivation for what this could be.

[45:39] Basically, about two or three weeks after he put in his trademark application — which was in March of last year — I put in mine in April of last year. And ever since then there’s been a little bit of back and forth there, in terms of his own progress on his trademark and my progress on mine.

[45:58] Which I’ll let you know — how this kind of stuff works, for context: his was kind of in line before me. And it was only actually about two weeks, a little over two weeks ago, that the final deadline for his trademark application — it actually expired and went into an abandoned state about two and a half months ago, and he had a two-month period within which he could revive it, which lapsed 17 days ago or something like that.

[46:31] So that’s the timing, right? That’s why we’re announcing this now. That’s why we’re really shifting into here and moving forward with this — because with his trademarks out of the way, mine is next in line.

[46:47] And that’s a long process, to be able to secure that. They have pretty long review periods, several months in between stages. So that is moving forward. We have a very, very strong position right now. And yeah, we’re basically first in line to inherit the Altspace trademark — which honestly is kind of crazy for me, in terms of coming full circle on all of this, right?

From here he goes further back, to where he started out building tools for Altspace world creators.

[47:33] Just to give you some more backstory of why this is all interesting, why it’s come full circle. So I started about 10 or 11 years ago. I was building tools for world creators using their SDK, as it was called at the time — but it became known as the old SDK, because they decided to change everything and go in a different direction.

[47:53] And at the time my tools were going to become redundant, and I made a decision: am I going to just let them become redundant, or will I try and do something else?

[48:09] So at the time I tried to build my own version of Altspace. It was called The Expanse at the time — some of you here may remember it. And I migrated all of my tools over so that you could use them for world building, right?

[48:25] Anybody here who’s familiar with the kit system, or the world builder in general, in Altspace in the later years — all of that was inspired by something I created called “Shane’s Editor”, which I’m kind of proud of, that fact. I definitely proved that it was a worthwhile effort to have tools like that, and that became the basis for Altspace to build out all of those tools later on.

[48:55] So it’s funny, right — so I spun it out into its own app. That app was submitted to Facebook at the time to get onto the Quest store, just months before the first Quest one had released. Meta rejected it.

[49:13] So that’s setback number two, right, in recent years. And the same thing again, same scenario: should I give up and abandon it all, or should I figure out another way? And it turns out that time I was super lucky, because I decided to create SideQuest.

[49:33] And yeah, here we are nearly seven years later — millions of users, millions of dollars in investment, and Google and other industry veterans backing what we’re doing. And the whole thing has led to where we are right now, because SideQuest has made it possible for me to make a bid to acquire the Altspace trademark, and to be able to bring Altspace back from the dead.

[49:59] So in a way, I owe everything I’ve got to Altspace. Had they not have made the decision to change direction all that long time ago, I wouldn’t have branched out, I wouldn’t have created SideQuest, and I wouldn’t be here today in a position to revive Altspace again.

[50:19] So yeah, in a way — don’t thank me, thank the original team at Altspace, you know.

A great resource for Linux VR users.

Nick Heer writes about how Facebook hijacked ‘metaverse’ into a meaningless catch-all.

In the weeks after Meta announced it was retreating from its metaverse efforts earlier this year, I revisited this and other earnings calls, plus presentations and other documentation, as I tried to better understand what the metaverse was pitched as compared to what it ultimately became.

I find it notable that Heer’s post never mentions VRChat. The hype storm stayed centered around Meta and crypto. The term “metaverse” got distorted and stretched to mean everything: online meetings, UGC, multiplayer games, 2D social spaces. Microsoft was calling Teams calls the metaverse at one point. It was bonkers, and it harmed how the mainstream perceived social VR.

VRChat stayed out of the mess and didn’t get branded with Zuck’s version of the label. It benefited from the 2020-2021 VR influx without being permanently grouped in with Horizon the way I feared. Even Dan Olson’s notable video, which Heer cites, only covers VRChat for context. The criticism stayed pointed at the crypto grifters and bullshit industry hype.

Julian Reyes writes about the recent and past closures of social VR spaces, and their impact on the communities that called them home.

It is easy for some to frame these closures as the disappearance of a product, a platform, or a failed business model. But those of us who have spent time inside virtual worlds know better. When a world goes dark, we do not simply lose connectivity. We lose places. We lose rituals, relationships, events, art, architecture, memory, and the transcendent sense of belonging that only emerges when a community spends enough time together to turn a platform into a home.

Virtual worlds can hold years of social, creative, and cultural life, yet too often they are still treated as temporary products rather than places worthy of stewardship. For the people who gather inside them, these are not disposable apps. They are lived environments.

Back when Altspace was initially shutting down, I was part of an unofficial envoy of sorts that went over to reach out as a representative of the VRChat community. Some of my long-time VRChat friends are Altspace refugees. I even made a small, private, Altspace “memorial” world at the time.

I hope those displaced by the recent closures can find or build a new space for themselves in VRChat. But I know that sometimes making the leap isn’t possible. Platforms often foster unique cultures and communities. And VRChat isn’t always a perfect fit for everyone. This can be due to technical reasons, but also due to cultural differences. In the end, though, VRChat having a wide spectrum of cultures and dispositions is good for the health of the platform.

Gilad Yadin on the eternal idea of virtual reality:

Influential philosophical ideas often find their way into popular culture; the idea of virtual reality is a strong example. Even when looking at early fantasy fiction, we can find portrayals of characters engrossed in elaborate dream realities.

He also has a follow-up post.

with the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming, the path to profitability has gotten tough enough that we’ve made the difficult decision to shut things down.

It’s always unfortunate to see VRChat competitors struggle, and shut down. Anyone in the social VR community who sees this as a win for VRChat has a very narrow perspective. Competition is good. And differentiated platforms that approach content and moderation differently can foster and attract different communities, different demographics. And this will grow social VR and VR in general.

Kyle Bosman on the creator economy of Fortnite:

Kyle Bosman: So I just want to show one clip, and again, no ire towards these individuals, just the business. But here is one good idea from one of the creator evangelists.

Epic Games Creator Evangelist 1: Like I also like the idea of buying like a limited time rake. That has 10 actions that lets you rake up 10 new plots of land.

Epic Games Creator Evangelist 2: Yeah.

Epic Games Creator Evangelist 1: Or something like that. Like there’s a lot of other stuff that you could could build here. So that would be like a consumable rake that would let you put ten new plots of plantable land down. Umm…

Kyle Bosman: Um so I have found that when I make videos, for every point that I try to make, there’s at least one corresponding comment that says, you’re wrong, bad take. And that’s okay. That’s good. That’s healthy. It’s good for there to be some disagreement in the comments, right?

But that rake? Buying a rake that has 10 uses and then goes away is bad. It’s a bad idea. And I feel like maybe for the first time ever, we’re all on the same page here. I feel like everyone watching this video said, oh yeah, that rake is a bad idea.

Kyle covers marketing and public relations in a way that more people should. Check out the full video for an example of Tim Sweeney talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Cube Drone commenting on scaling social networks:

So, uh, practically, I work for a multiplayer social thing, on the server team, and while we allow unlimited blocks - in order to make that work I had to spend a good month carefully re-engineering the way we store that data, and then building a careful fence around features that might use that data. Unbounded data is hard to work with compared to bounded data!

Meta PR:

We started Worlds for VR with a small crew of dedicated creators who set out to build immersive experiences on their own. Last year, we began to experiment with Worlds as a mobile platform, and we saw positive momentum. Now, to truly change the game and tap into a much larger market, we’re going all-in on mobile.

Where are the tracked legs, Mark?

It really feels like the inherent contradictions of Social VR have to be accepted. Especially during this (still) early era. And Meta took too long to start embracing that fact.

Welcome to The Great Pug linklog. I’m not 100% sure what I’m doing, but I plan to post links and comments on happenings in Social VR and Virtual Reality here. If you are someone who hangs out with me in Discord, a lot of what appears here will be familiar to #in-the-news followers.

-owlboy