Meta Is Shutting Down VR Social Platform Horizon Worlds (cnbc.com)
- Reference: 0181036914
- News link: https://meta.slashdot.org/story/26/03/18/1757218/meta-is-shutting-down-vr-social-platform-horizon-worlds
- Source link: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/18/meta-horizon-worlds-metaverse-vr.html
> The shift for Horizon Worlds, which was once a central part of the company's push into virtual reality, comes weeks after Meta cut over 1,000 employees from Reality Labs, the unit responsible for the metaverse. [...] The social platform has never drawn more than a [4]couple hundred thousand active users a month, CNBC previously reported.
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> The virtual 3D social network where avatars could interact and play games with other users officially launched [5]in late 2021 . It operated exclusively on the Quest VR platform until Meta launched a mobile app version in September 2023. The mobile version of Horizon Worlds was built to provide an entry point for users without VR headsets, functioning similarly to Roblox.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/18/meta-horizon-worlds-metaverse-vr.html
[2] https://meta.slashdot.org/story/21/10/28/1825246/facebook-is-changing-its-name-to-meta
[3] https://communityforums.atmeta.com/blog/AnnouncementsBlog/updates-to-your-meta-quest-experience-in-2026/1369435
[4] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/02/18/2042234/metas-social-vr-platform-horizon-hits-300000-users
[5] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/12/09/184230/meta-opens-up-access-to-its-vr-social-platform-horizon-worlds
What's in a name (Score:2)
As their metaverse vision completes it's final death throes, keeping the brand name marking their misguided chase of a fad seems still appropriate.
Re: (Score:3)
I just bought metai.com !
Re: (Score:2)
Good call!! ROTFL!!
YAAAAAAAY (Score:2)
What a despicable blight on the VR world that piece of shit was. I'm glad it moved to mobile where it belongs.
And no one cared.... (Score:2)
...except for the people who lost their job without lining up something else first.
That's a good first step (Score:2)
Next step, shut down Meta.
Re: (Score:3)
Now you're just being greedy
Zarquan! (Score:2)
Time to dust off my old Quest headset. Maybe there will be a party, Restaurant at the End of the Universe-style.
Re: (Score:2)
No, just a low battery warning, fuzzy screen-door graphics, and neck pain.
So I guess Metaverse ... (Score:2)
... is now just Averse? A nonsensical verse at that!
That's okay - if it had succeeded, it would have taken on an additional letter and become 'Met ad verse'.
So? (Score:3)
"And nothing of value was lost..." -- The Critic
horizon is a soulless corperate slop (Score:1)
vrchat is what people actually want to go to
Not just careless but awful people (Score:2)
How creeps like Zuckerberg thought they could sell nothingness for big money.
I was always amazed... (Score:2)
...when they renamed the company to follow that weird bent. It was very easy very early on to see that none of this would ever be popular, people had a hard enough time getting interested in even wearing polarized glasses to view movies in 3D, that whole trend has crashed and burned. (I like stereo photography myself, but I understand the problem with mass appeal) But the fact that they expected people to run out and buy these super expensive VR headsets and do things with them is just laughable. I've
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen one good use for a VR headset so far: peripheral vision testing at an optometrist.
Everything else is a waste of time and resources.
Re: (Score:1)
Oh it's worse than you think. I had the mis(fortune) to talk to META VR and AR engineers at one point. I was stunned, as they are asking semi-technical questions, to learn they had little to no experience with VR or AR itself. They didn't even use or care about their own products! Further, they had this aura of "I'm too superior ro use VR and AR that's for nerds". It blew me away. The entire group was run by marketing/politics masquerading as basic engineering. Mark was too nice to them, and let them take h
Obligatory.. (Score:2)
Nelson reaction...
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOifa1WrOnQ
But wait!!! (Score:2)
You can't shut it down!!! It's supposed to be the leading generator of revenue and everyone will be using VR glasses like cell phones! Wait, that was something like 2010.
MarkZ learns! (Score:1)
MarkZ finally learns that hiring attractive, supposed "smart" people, who play politics all day can't develop. You'd think someone was a programmer would clue in faster.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember, every one else is just "dumb fucks" to him.
I still remember (Score:2)
I still remember watching Zuck on stage, with his big soulless eyes, telling everyone that this was the future, and being completely amazed this idiot is actually a billionaire. How many billions did this fool waste on this venture? Why is he still a billionaire? What is wrong with the fucking world?
The staggering stupidity of it (Score:2)
Really does show that if you take a billionaire outside of the one thing they blundered into that they really are completely incompetent.
Just like how we found out how completely incompetent Elon Musk was when he got to design a vehicle and the result was the cybertruck
Like the old saying goes never ask a Man how he made his first million.
Nobody saw that coming ! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, nobody wearing VR glasses.
The rest of us though...
Re: Nobody saw that coming ! (Score:2)
Nice. Palmer cashed that check faaaaaaast.
Re:Nobody [heard] that coming ! (Score:2)
Deserves the Funny, but I'm hoping for a joke storm on the topic. My own attempt at humor will fall down, of course. It's like the tree that fell down in the forest and no one heard it. Did it make a sound?
And I never heard of this thing, whatever it was. I just hope Zuck lost a lot of money down the toilet. More noise getting flushed than it ever made before it was shut down?
Related reading? Recommending a book on Slashdot is another joke these years, but Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Power
Re: Nobody saw that coming ! (Score:1)
my wife just got us both quest 3s's for valentines so we could go to a virtual mini concert together on vrchat; we also have been exploring various user made worlds there; including places ported from games from my childhood like phantasy star online (theres even a vr playable implimentation of the basic gameplay); its been amazing fun and really a special experience to be in those spaces physically with my heavenly wife; i wish we had met back then; but she was a toddler in russia at the time