Facebook Is Finally Shutting Down The Metaverse And The Amount They Spent Is Insane

80 BILLION DOLLARS

That’s how much Meta (Facebook) spent on their now-defunct VR platform. If it helps to imagine, that’s roughly the GDP of Slovenia, oh that doesn’t help you? I’m sorry, I thought you were Slovenian…

Yes, it’s true, the day has FINALLY come. People are cheering in the streets. There are fireworks. They’re burning an effigy of Mark Zuckerberg. Because on June 15, Meta will shut down ‘Horizon Worlds’ the company’s flagship VR world.

Although the ‘game’ will still be available on mobile for some ungodly reason.

Here’s some corporate speak garbage announcing the change, “We are separating the two platforms so each can grow with greater focus, and the Horizon Worlds platform will become a mobile-only experience.” Shut up, don’t spin this as a positive, we all know you messed up.

This is all part of Meta’s winding down from the whole VR craze of the 2010s so they can instead jump on the AI craze of the 2020s. This news follows the firing of 1,000 employees (around 10% of workers) from Reality Labs, Meta’s in house VR dev team.

Reality Labs by the way was once the trailblazing company Oculus VR before it was bought and folded into the company. So it’s a little sad to see the same pattern play out of ‘small company makes something interesting, gets absorbed by larger rival, then is gutted and discarded.’ Rinse and repeat.

But it does make business sense, unfortunately. Since 2020, Reality Labs have racked up total losses of $80 billion. And after launch it just didn’t connect with users. Turns out people don’t want to put on a ski-goggle-brick just to check their emails. On top of that the launch was massively fumbled, with the promoted product looking no better than a really really janky Sims.

Hide Your Facebook In Shame

So what do you do with a failed product launch and billions in losses? You go ALL IN BABY! That’s right, Facebook had already doubled down on the tech by rebranding as ‘Meta’ and doubling down on the narrative that the ‘metaverse’ was the future without ever really explaining what it was.

Back in 2021, the Zuck said, “Our hope is that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers.” Eesh.

Stock nosedives followed and now the company is trying to backpeddle saying, ‘No, no, we’re not a metaverse company, we’re an AI company now!’ whilst they still have ‘WE ARE A METAVERSE COMPANY’ stapled to their forehead.

Even the Meta website hasn’t yet caught up with the pivot, saying, “The metaverse is the future of digital connection.” Are you sure about that?

So yeah, I’m sorry for anyone and everyone who put time, effort and money into this project, Facebook just went too hard, too fast and ran something promising into the ground. It was ever thus. Welcome to the wacky world of tech.