So, picture this: You’ve got your VR setup, right? But instead of that fancy treadmill thingy, you’re sitting. Weird, huh? Enter Cybershoes. Yeah, it’s like the roller skates of VR. Just slap ’em on, and you’re virtually running while plopped on a chair. Confused yet? Thought so.
Apparently, though, it wasn’t catchy enough. Boom, gone. Cybershoes just bowed out, leaving us wondering what the heck happened. Thanks to some dude named Antony Vitillo (or Skarred Ghost, which—let’s be real—sounds way cooler), we found out that Cybershoes stopped making these gizmos two years ago. Did I say weird already? Anyway, by April 2025, the company in Austria officially closed up shop. Sad-boots story.
One of the founders, Igor Mitric Lavovski, even tossed this out on LinkedIn. Isn’t that like tweeting but for business people? He confirmed the shutdown but didn’t exactly spill the beans on why—like, no juicy details about bankruptcy or whatever.
There’s this law thingy in Austria. You gotta file for insolvency if you’re broke or really in debt. I mean, duh. Common sense, right? But who knows what that’ll reveal.
Okay, let’s backtrack. What exactly were these shoes? Unlike those funky VR treadmills that make you feel like a hamster, Cybershoes promise some action while seated. Imagine your feet in rollers, measuring foot twistiness. Told ya it’s weird.
They kicked off (hah, shoe joke!) in 2018, gathering over 200k euros through Kickstarter. Bet they weren’t expecting that, huh? They kept the ball rolling with an IndieGogo campaign in 2019, another 140k euros squeezed out from folks. Guess it didn’t wow the investors, though.
Fast forward to 2020: New Kickstarter for those Oculus Quest things. But this time? Meh, only pulled in about $98k. A flop compared to before. Ouch.
If you’re thinking of buying one now, think again. Official stores, Amazon—dry as a desert. They’ve been out of stock since late 2024. And no, I didn’t go all detective mode on this; Amazon’s price tracker spilled the beans.
So, there you go. The quirky roller shoe tale, full circle. Who knew sitting VR adventures had such epic rise and fall stories?
