Meta introduced this week that it’s pulling the plug on the digital actuality model of Horizon Worlds, the platform that was as soon as the centerpiece of Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse wager.
Beginning June 15, customers will now not be capable of construct, publish, or replace VR worlds, or entry Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest headsets, in keeping with Meta’s announcement.
The platform will survive solely as a standalone cell app.
It’s a outstanding finish for a mission that prompted Zuckerberg to rename his total firm.
When Meta modified its identify from Fb in October 2021, Zuckerberg referred to as the metaverse “the following frontier,” writing: “Our hope is that inside the subsequent decade, the metaverse will attain a billion individuals, host a whole lot of billions of {dollars} of digital commerce, and help jobs for tens of millions of creators and builders.”
Properly, that didn’t go the way in which he deliberate. In his video again then saying the metaverse, which I pressured myself to observe, Zuckerberg got here off a bit lizard-like,
You’ll be able to watch his total keynote presentation beneath, if you would like just a little blast from the previous:
What’s going away, and when
By March 31, Horizon Worlds and Occasions will disappear from the Quest Retailer, and Meta’s personal showcase worlds — Horizon Central, Occasions Enviornment, Kaiju, and Bobber Bay — will go darkish in VR, in keeping with Meta’s announcement.
Horizon-specific Meta Horizon Plus perks, together with Meta Credit, Digital Clothes, and In-World Purchases, may even be faraway from the subscription.
Customers who’ve already downloaded Horizon Worlds can maintain enjoying in VR till June 15, after which the app will probably be faraway from Quest fully.
This week’s announcement wasn’t the primary shoe to drop.
In February, Meta completely shut down Horizon Workrooms — the VR assembly platform pitched to workplace staff as a substitute for Zoom — and deleted all person information. The corporate additionally stopped promoting industrial Quest headsets and stopped accepting new clients for its Quest for Enterprise program, in keeping with a enterprise influence evaluation by Snazzy Options.
The January Actuality Labs layoffs minimize over 1,000 workers and shuttered VR studios, together with Ouro Interactive, an in-house studio inbuilt 2023 particularly to create first-party Horizon Worlds content material, in keeping with Bloomberg.
The invoice comes due
Actuality Labs misplaced $19.19 billion in 2025 alone, bringing cumulative losses since 2020 to $83.6 billion, in keeping with Meta’s This fall and full-year 2025 earnings report.
Samantha Ryan, Meta’s VP of content material at Actuality Labs, framed the shutdown as a “doubling down” somewhat than a retreat, saying in a February weblog put up that Meta could be “doubling down on the VR developer ecosystem whereas shifting the main focus of Worlds to be virtually solely cell.”
“By breaking issues down into two distinct platforms, we’ll be higher capable of clearly give attention to every,” she added.
Ryan additionally insisted that Meta stays dedicated to VR. She mentioned that Meta was nonetheless “the only greatest investor within the VR business” and nonetheless believed in VR “as a essential know-how on the trail to the following computing platform.”
An inconceivable promote for enterprise
The failure of Horizon Workrooms, Meta’s enterprise VR assembly platform, was fully predictable.
If you happen to’re in a Zoom assembly, you possibly can test your e-mail, pull up your calendar, share your display screen, use a whiteboard, and entry recordings and transcripts. Everybody already has Zoom put in. Everybody already has a digicam.
If you wish to maintain that very same assembly in VR, you first want to search out your headset. Cost it. Obtain no matter updates have amassed. Bear in mind the best way to use it. Work out the best way to share the assembly invite. Be certain all of your co-workers have their gear. Educate at the very least one in every of them the best way to use theirs.
Then, when you’re really within the assembly, the screens are exhausting to learn. You don’t have easy accessibility to your desktop apps. Typing is troublesome or inconceivable. You’ll be able to’t test your telephone if one thing pressing is available in.
It’s not sensible for 99.9 p.c of enterprise use circumstances.
I’ve actually tried to do work in VR. I actually have. I’ve tried to drag my staff members in. I’ve even given out free headsets. It’s a really exhausting promote. There’s actually no upside to doing work in VR. It’s all draw back..
And for the uncommon case the place VR may make sense — say, reviewing a bodily product mockup with a distributed staff — you’d need to add that mockup to Meta’s servers. Meta would have entry to each dialogue about it, each doc associated to it, each inner element of your product growth course of. For any firm critical about mental property, that alone is a dealbreaker.
That is what Horizon Workrooms by no means solved. The buyer model had the identical issues. Wagner James Au, a longtime digital worlds journalist, advised The American Prospect that Horizon Worlds didn’t get “the social facet proper,” noting that “these are digital communities they usually have to be welcoming. They should have individuals you wish to hang around with within the expertise.”
What Second Life and OpenSim bought proper — form of
In the meantime, Second Life, which launched in 2003, earlier than the iPhone existed, continues to be working.
So are a whole lot of OpenSim grids, a lot of them operated by volunteers on a shoestring finances. The hypergrid, a community of interconnected OpenSim worlds the place avatars can teleport between grids whereas retaining their look, belongings, and pal lists, was by no means going to lose $19 billion in a single yr. It additionally was by no means going to get shut down by a quarterly earnings name.
The distinction with Meta is stark. Second Life’s digital economic system strikes roughly $650 million per yr, and Linden Lab has paid out $1.1 billion to creators over the platform’s lifetime — 14 of whom grew to become millionaires from promoting digital vogue and actual property, in keeping with an evaluation of the platform’s historical past by sport developer Philip Ludington.
Meta, by comparability, by no means constructed a functioning creator economic system. Whereas Second Life customers retain copyright to their content material, Meta Horizon Worlds gave Meta sole management over content material and utilization rights. It was a closed ecosystem run by a single entity.
The income cut up made issues worse. When Meta examined in-app purchases, creators obtained solely 52.5 p.c of pre-tax income after platform charges. Philip Rosedale — now CTO of Linden Lab, and Second Life’s authentic founder — referred to as Meta’s payment construction self-defeating, telling PC Gamer: “It looks like a good way to dissuade creators from really taking part in its economic system, however frankly I’d anticipate nothing much less from them.” He famous on the time that Linden Lab had paid out $86 million to Second Life creators in a single yr.
Second Life’s magic sauce was not its know-how.
Meta thought higher graphics and VR immersion would assist it succeed. Sansar thought VR-native design would do it. Excessive Constancy thought next-gen infrastructure would do it. Decentraland thought blockchain possession would do it. None of it labored, as a result of Second Life’s benefit isn’t know-how however somewhat 23 years of amassed tradition, financial infrastructure, and relationships constructed inside a shared world, says Ludington.
OpenSim has one thing even tougher to duplicate: it’s absolutely open supply, decentralized, and owned by nobody. No company board can resolve to close it down. No quarterly earnings report can kill it. It’s extra like the way in which the Web works, and why I’m a giant fan. And in addition why I’ve been writing about OpenSim for the previous 17 years.
Personally, I feel a closed metaverse isn’t the way in which to go.
What Meta is shutting down, and what’s staying
Plenty of headlines this week mentioned “Meta kills its metaverse.” Together with mine. That’s the way you get the clicks, proper?
However that’s not fairly the complete image.
Shutting down in VR:
Horizon Worlds — however simply the VR model: Gone from the Quest Retailer by March 31; the app itself faraway from all Quest headsets on June 15, in keeping with Meta’s announcement.
Horizon Workrooms: Meta’s VR workplace assembly platform shut down in February, with all person information deleted, in keeping with PC Gamer.
Quest for Enterprise: Meta stopped promoting industrial Quest headsets and accepting new enterprise clients in February, in keeping with PC Gamer.
Meta’s personal first-party VR content material: Meta acknowledged in its developer weblog that 86 p.c of the time Quest customers spend of their headsets is already with third-party apps — that means its personal content material was largely irrelevant to how individuals really used the system. The corporate has now closed three in-house VR studios fully.
The Horizon Feed and Worlds button in Quest’s interface: The headset’s new Navigator UI boots to a grid of put in apps, with the Horizon social feed eliminated, in keeping with Engadget.
Nonetheless out there:
Quest headsets: Nonetheless being offered. Meta says it has “a strong roadmap of future VR headsets that will probably be tailor-made to completely different viewers segments,” in keeping with its developer weblog. A next-generation gaming headset is in growth, in keeping with Tom’s Information.
Third-party VR video games: Beat Saber, Superhot VR, Gorilla Tag, and hundreds of others stay absolutely out there on Quest. Meta says it invested almost $150 million in VR developer applications in 2025 and that new releases together with Laborious Bullet, The Thrill of the Struggle 2, and UG every earned tens of millions in income, in keeping with Meta’s developer weblog.
Horizon Worlds as a cell app: Survives on iOS and Android, repositioned as a Roblox-style cell sport platform. Meta says it grew cell month-to-month energetic customers greater than 4 occasions over in 2025, and that 4 cell creators hit $1 million in lifetime income, in keeping with the developer weblog.
