The Void at Downtown Disney District Permanently Shut Down Due to License Agreement Breach; Disney Springs Location Potentially Affected

Jessica Figueroa

The Void at Downtown Disney District Permanently Shut Down Due to License Agreement Breach; Disney Springs Location Potentially Affected

After closing temporarily with the rest of Disneyland Resort in mid-March, The Void has now been permanently shut down after receiving a Notice of Event Default and Lease Termination from the Walt Disney World Operating Participants Department.

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The notice, dated June 30, 2020, was recently posted at the doors of the location, right over previous signage indicating the previous temporary closure. The notice cites a breach of the Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures license.

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No longer tenants of the Downtown Disney District shopping and dining complex, The Void must cease all use of Disney IP, or intellectual property, through Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire and Ralph Breaks VR, plus any and all Disney promotional material, trademarks, and confidential information.

With the recent ban on indoor entertainment across Orange County due to rising rates of COVID-19 cases in California, it’s unlikely that The Void would’ve been able to reopen with the rest of the Downtown Disney District, but now it seems the days of the immersive Virtual Reality experience are over.

It’s unconfirmed how and if this breach will affect the Disney Springs location for The Void. At this time, neither locations list any available experiences on The Void’s website.

17 thoughts on “The Void at Downtown Disney District Permanently Shut Down Due to License Agreement Breach; Disney Springs Location Potentially Affected”

  1. The article is poorly written.
     
    You state “No longer tenants of the Downtown Disney District shopping and dining complex, The Void must cease all use of Disney IP, or intellectual property, through Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire and Ralph Breaks VR, plus any and all Disney promotional material, trademarks, and confidential information.” That implies that BECAUSE they are no longer tenants, they can’t use Disney IP and suggests they were evicted for a lease issue (like note paying rent) and that additionally, they lost the rights to use Disney IP, suggesting the the two were tied together in some odd way. 
     
    If you read the actual letters posted, it’s the other way around. The Void seems to have violated their IP license with Disney Media in some unspecified way and that resulted in the termination of THAT agreement. Since they no longer have IP rights to Disney property, Disney Parks terminated their agreement with The Void as The Void could no longer present Disney related VR experiences.
     
    It sounds like a small difference, but in fact in the former case, it makes Disney Parks look bad (it suggests Disney kicked the Void out for failing to make rent which would be surreal since Disney itself closed the parks, making it impossible for The Void to make money from those locations) whereas in the latter case, it suggests The Void has done something to violate their agreement with Disney Media.

      • I believe that is correct. They violated their license with the affiliate not the landlord. Without the affiliate license the landlord terminated the lease.

        • It is more likely they haven’t paid rent at either location and the Disney locations are necessary to keep the license. That’s may assumption.

          • If that was the case it would say that however it states clearly in the documents that an event of default on their lease was being enforced due to breach of WDSMP breach of license.

          • The first letter (dated 6/29) is a notice that shows Disney received a notice of secured party public sale from an entity called VR Boom, LLC, which seems to violate one of the terms in their licensing agreement. This violation allowed them to terminate the WDSMP License.
             
            The lease termination notice (dated 6/30) states that since they no longer have a valid WDSMP License, this is considered a default on the property, since they no longer have the rights to operate the themed experience, which means they need to exit immediately and return the site to the condition they agreed to on the lease.
             
            What’s interesting is that if you look at the patents that the Void held (search in Google Patents), they all have been assigned (essentially transferred) to this VR Boom entity. If I were to make a wild guess, it looks like VR Boom may have some sort of rights to The Void’s assets, including IP. Just a guess, but since The Void no longer has sole ownership of the IP (due to financial issues or otherwise), perhaps it voided terms in their licensing agreement. Or it could be something else — we don’t know since we don’t know the details of their licensing agreement to see how it was breached.

          • Most commercial lease agreements contain a forced major clause. Which would allow the tenants some flexibility in paying their rent during a government ordered shutdown. I doubt The landlord would have a solid legal standing to evict a tenant at this time for not paying rent. While violating some licensing agreement could.

  2. WhAt exactly did they breech?! This does not make sense. Can someone please explain what’s going on here?

  3. I have something to whine about. Why does “related articles” include an article that says “6 restaurants at Pleasure Island are SOON to shut down”, and the article is dated 2008? If the article is 12 years old it’s probably not related to anything we need to know. (And those six restaurants are not closing SOON)

  4. So confused by this. What exactly was the breach? I follow both ILMxLab and The Void pretty closely on all social channels, and get emails from The Void.

    Haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary…

  5. It is also entirely possible that they have not been able to make their royalty payments for using either or both Disney titles. I suspect they have to pay a per use Disney license fee for every guest who pays to go through The Void in addition to paying rent at the physical location. It’s sad but this seems inevitable given the sheer weight of having to deal with PPE and cleaning all the gear the guest wears in any VR experience.

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