Meta’s VR Metaverse takes one more step into the grave

When Facebook changed its name to Meta a few years ago, the idea was that the VR Metaverse would become a huge pillar for the company. I think we can say with certainty that this will not happen.

On its community forums, Meta has confirmed that Horizon Worlds, the flagship “hang out and do work meetings in VR” app for Quest headsets, will no longer be available in VR after June 15. It won’t disappear completely, as Meta recently shifted its metaverse efforts to a Horizon Worlds mobile app. But Mark Zuckerberg’s COVID-era dream that people spent large portions of their days wearing VR headsets and having fun in Horizon Worlds appears to be dead.

To be fair to Meta, Horizon Worlds’ cross-platform approach isn’t new. It’s been available on mobile and desktop since 2023, and it should be successful enough in the mobile format for Meta to continue to support and build upon this version of the Horizon Worlds metaverse. But while it was supposed to be a seller of VR systems, Horizon Worlds was often mocked online for its disappointing visual quality, its initial lack of legs for avatars, and its reputation as a virtual ghost town.

Of course, right now that doesn’t mean Meta is abandoning VR. When it announced that Horizon would go mobile earlier this year, Meta reaffirmed its commitment to virtual reality as a format.

“We have a strong roadmap for future VR headsets that will be tailored to different audience segments as the market grows and matures,” Meta said in a press release. “And Meta remains the largest investor in the VR industry. Why? Because we believe in VR as an essential technology on the path to the next computing platform.”

The enduring popularity of things like VRChat indicates that there East a market for these types of virtual meeting spaces, but Zuckerberg’s specific vision of the metaverse never really took off as expected. At least we got a few memes out of it.