We’re thrilled to share some exciting news from Long Beach: 8th Wall Studio has been named Best Developer Tool at the 2025 Auggie Awards at Augmented World Expo USA! 🏆

This recognition is more than a win for us, it’s a celebration of the incredible community of developers, creators, and builders who are shaping the future of immersive technology alongside us.

8th Wall Studio has officially moved out of beta! With today's general release, Studio becomes a fully supported, production grade platform that makes building 3D and XR content faster, smarter, and more scalable than ever.

Along with this milestone, we are excited to announce the addition of a number of new features and enhancements, including AI-powered asset generation, native app export and more. 

Whether you're creating interactive WebAR experiences, building a 3D app for mobile, or prototyping the next big idea, 8th Wall now gives you everything you need to move from concept to launch in record time.

And yes, with ourupdated pricing, even the free plan includes access to these new features so you can start creating right away.

8th Wall Studio continues to evolve with each release, bringing fresh features to empower creators. With our latest update, we’re excited to introduce Prefabs, enabling you to create reusable, customizable game templates that streamline and scale your development.

The Auggies are back—and we’re proud to announce that 12 incredible WebAR experiences powered by 8th Wall have been nominated across 6 categories at AWE USA 2025! These nominations celebrate the groundbreaking work of developers, agencies, and brands pushing the limits of what’s possible with WebAR.

From snack-fueled adventures and spatial documentaries to holographic concerts and immersive social impact stories, this year’s lineup showcases the creativity, versatility, and global reach of experiences built with 8th Wall.

💡 And we’re thrilled to share that Niantic Studio—the all-in-one WebAR engine that powers these projects—has been nominated for both Best Developer Tool and Best Creator Tool.

Now’s your chance to celebrate these amazing experiences and help them bring home the win! 🗳️

Niantic Studio keeps getting better with every update as we roll out new features and improvements. With our latest update, we’re excited to introduce the all-new UI Toolkit, giving you more control than ever when building user interfaces and 2D objects in Studio.

We're thrilled to launch Image Targets in Niantic Studio! This groundbreaking feature empowers you to build interactive augmented reality (AR) experiences triggered by physical images—without extensive coding. Whether you're a solo developer or part of an agency, this update streamlines the process of crafting immersive AR projects that seamlessly blend with the real world.

We're always adding new tools to Niantic Studio to help you build more engaging and complex WebXR experiences and 3D web games. Today, we're rolling out Niantic Maps for Web and Spaces, two features that make creating location-based experiences and multi-level gameplay easier than ever.

This holiday season, we want to give you a chance to discover, play, and celebrate the incredible creativity of the developers who built with Niantic Studio in 2024.  Over the past six months, thousands of new developers joined the platform, creating a wide range of web games and real-world experiences. To make it easier to explore and enjoy these creations, we’re introducing a new playground: nianticarcade.com 

This curated collection showcases some of the most exciting web games and experiences created since Niantic Studio launched in June. From side-scrolling adventures to endless runners to splat-based experiences, these projects demonstrate the versatility and innovation made possible with Niantic Studio. These experiences come across the Niantic 8th Wall developer community, from the Studio developer challenges, the Developer Accelerator Fund, and even a few creations from the Niantic team. 

For the initial release, our team handpicked every experience on the page. In 2025, we hope this becomes a space where developers can publish their projects for discovery by players and other creators. Have a project you’d like to see featured? Fill out this form, we’ll be reviewing new submissions in the new year.

As we close out 2024, we want to thank the incredible developer community for shaping Niantic Studio during its public beta. Your work and feedback are vital in helping Niantic Studio become the best visual interface and web gaming engine for creating real-world WebXR web games and experiences. Celebrate how far we’ve come together, and get inspired for what’s next, by heading to nianticarcade.com to start playing today.

We’re excited to announce the launch of two powerful new features—backend proxies and backend functions—as the first of our Backend Services in Niantic Studio. These tools bring new capabilities to Niantic Studio, equipping developers to handle backend logic and integrate external services directly into their WebAR and web games. Integrating Backend Services is  a key milestone in expanding the flexibility and power of Niantic Studio, opening the door to more complex, secure, and dynamic AR applications.

Backend functions: Enabling secure and sophisticated web game logic 
Backend functions allow you to write server-side logic that integrates seamlessly with client-side code. This unlocks new possibilities for adding advanced, secure game mechanics to WebXR applications, such as anti-cheat to ensure fair play. 

In our Hangman-inspired sample project, backend functions store the words and the game logic on the backend, while the client handles and tracks player stats like current progress on the word and letters already guessed. With each request to the server, these states are securely stored and updated in real time, demonstrating how backend functions can manage core game components and maintain data integrity between the client and the server. This server-side processing means anti-cheat systems can be implemented, preventing players from tampering with the game data stored locally in their browser.