Houseparty

The lockdown living room, closed by Fortnite's owner

Shut down
19902026

Houseparty was a group video chat app that worked like dropping by: open it and you were "in the house", friends could join your room unannounced, and games ran inside the call. Built by the founders of Meerkat after that app died, it exploded during the spring 2020 lockdowns with 50 million sign-ups in a month. Epic Games, its owner since 2019, shut it down in October 2021.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2016
  2. September 2016 Launch
    Houseparty launches

    Group video chat that works like dropping by, from the Meerkat team.

  3. 2019
  4. 12 June 2019 Acquisition
    Epic Games buys it

    The Fortnite company wants social infrastructure.

  5. 2020
  6. 15 April 2020 Peak
    50 million sign-ups in a month

    The lockdown living room, top of the charts in 80 countries.

  7. November 2020 Feature
    Video chat inside Fortnite

    The acquisition produces "Houseparty mode" in the game.

  8. 2021
  9. 9 September 2021 Shutdown announced
    Epic announces the end

    The team moves to Epic's social and metaverse work.

  10. October 2021 Shutdown
    The app closes

    The servers go off in October.

The site through time

Browse houseparty.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Ben Rubin and Sima Sistani (Life on Air) 2016–2019 Founded The Meerkat team's second act
Epic Games 2019–2021 Acquisition Bought the team for Fortnite's social future, closed the app two years later

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Registered accounts ▲ 50 million 15 April 2020 Reported Sign-ups in the month to mid-April 2020, as reported by the company

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Epic Games, which had bought Houseparty in 2019, announced on 9 September 2021 that the app would shut down in October. The team was folded into Epic's work on social features and the metaverse, and the app's in-Fortnite video chat went with it.

Our analysis: Houseparty had the strangest curve in social software: years of decline, one month of total ubiquity in spring 2020, then decline again as soon as the lockdowns eased. Epic had bought a team more than a product, and once the pandemic spike proved temporary, keeping a separate app alive made no sense to a company building social layers into Fortnite itself.

History [edit]

From Meerkat's ashes

Ben Rubin and Sima Sistani's company Life on Air had already had one famous product: Meerkat, the live-streaming app that briefly owned South by Southwest 2015 before Twitter's Periscope crushed it. Rather than fight, the team killed Meerkat themselves and shipped something more intimate in 2016: Houseparty, group video chat designed to feel like presence rather than appointment.

The design was the product. Opening the app put you "in the house", visible to friends, who could simply join you; there was no calling, no scheduling, and strangers entering a room triggered an alert to lock the door. Quizzes and games ran inside the call years before that was common. Teenagers used it the way earlier generations used the landline after school: hours of ambient company.

Epic Games bought the company in June 2019, a curious buyer explained by what Epic wanted to build: social infrastructure around Fortnite.

The spike

In March and April 2020, Houseparty became the lockdown's living room. Around 50 million people signed up in a month, it topped the app charts in over 80 countries, and its trivia nights substituted for pubs. A viral rumour that the app had been hacked, which the company denied and offered a million-dollar bounty over, barely dented it.

The spike ended with the lockdowns. By 2021 usage had fallen back, the founders had moved on, and Epic wanted the team on Fortnite's social features, some of which, like the in-game video chat "Houseparty mode", the acquisition had already produced. On 9 September 2021 Epic announced the app would close in October. The house emptied out for good when the servers went.

Similar projects

Wunderlist The to-do app Microsoft bought to bury 2011–2020 Vine Six seconds, looped forever 2013–2017 Periscope Live from anywhere, until the money ran out 2015–2021 Half.com It once bought a whole town for its name 1999–2017 Meebo Every messenger, in one browser tab 2005–2012 Musical.ly The lip-sync app that became TikTok 2014–2018

Sources [edit]

  1. Meerkat's founders launch Houseparty The Verge 28 September 2016 [archived]
  2. Houseparty reports 50M sign-ups in past month TechCrunch 15 April 2020 [archived]
  3. Epic Games is shutting down Houseparty The Verge 9 September 2021 [archived]

Last verified: 14 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).