Get ready to say goodbye to Houseparty. The video-chatting app is shutting down next month.
The team behind Houseparty is retiring the app to focus on building new social experiences for Epic Games, which acquired Houseparty in 2019.
The impending shutdown is a little surprising, given that Houseparty’s popularity grew last year due to the pandemic, and the ensuing need to stay at home. The free app allows you to create virtual hangout rooms with your friends, where you can also play mini-games.
“We do not take the decision to discontinue the app lightly,” the Houseparty team wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “We created Houseparty to let people feel like they’re together even when physically apart.”
However, the developers have lately been consumed with creating new features for Epic Games, the company behind hit multiplayer shooter Fortnite.
“Since joining Epic, the Houseparty team’s social vision and core technology have already contributed to new features used by hundreds of millions of people in Fortnite and by developers around the world,” the developers wrote. “As a result, we can’t give the app or our community the attention that it deserves.”
For Houseparty fans, the good news is that the app will continue to run until October for those who have it downloaded on their devices. However, the team has already removed the Houseparty app from both Google Play and Apple's App Store, which will prevent new users from enjoying the video-chatting service.
Fans are already lamenting the shutdown. “Please No. my family has been on since the beginning. We are all living all over the country and it keeps us connected!” wrote one user on Twitter. For recommendations on other video chat apps, you can check out our guide.