What the first answer said: Filteroff was acquired and later listed out of business, and room costs were priced on the video vendor of the first plan's stack.
What checking found: The October 2024 sale is confirmed; the later closure could not be confirmed in a primary source. The cost figures belonged to the older stack. The current plan runs voice rooms on Cloudflare Realtime, so those vendor prices are not published.
The finding
The research traced small-group and one-to-one video products from 2016 to 2026. The pattern repeats. Houseparty drew about 50 million sign-ups during pandemic lockdowns, lost ground to Zoom and others as habits changed, and Epic Games shut it in October 2021. Filteroff, a video-first dating app, was sold to Spark Networks in October 2024. Random video chat faded under abuse and bots.
The research named five recurring causes. The habit was tied to lockdown or hype. Random matching drew bad actors. Video takes more effort than text. Deepfakes weaken the idea that video proves someone is real. Large apps add video as a checkbox. Its cost work found live translation, not call hosting, to be the expensive part of a video room.
Why it mattered to the design
Peoplarium does not build video as the product. Public video roulette and infinite video feeds were cut. The first real-time feature is voice speed-meets in Phase 1b: short timed rounds between verified adults in interest cohorts, with live voice moderation. Video comes later and only by consent. The picture stays blurred until both people accept, and each grant is recorded in the consent ledger. Live translation is metered rather than always on, because it costs far more per minute than hosting the call. The measure is meetups that follow, not minutes watched.
How it was checked
AI research agents built the product history and a per-minute cost table. TechCrunch's 2021 report confirmed the Houseparty shutdown and its lockdown growth. Online Personals Watch confirmed the Filteroff sale. The research also said Filteroff was later listed out of business; the pages we could open did not show that, so this page does not rely on it. The per-minute prices were for the video vendor in the first plan's stack, which has since been replaced, so they are left out.
Sources
- Epic Games to shut down Houseparty in October, TechCrunch, published 2021-09-09. Checked 2026-09-28.
- Dating app Filteroff acquired by Spark Networks, Online Personals Watch, published 2024-10-07. Checked 2026-09-28.