Meta announced big changes to its original virtual reality world, as Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of a world in goggles gets closer to shutting down.
Horizon Worlds, Meta’s flagship Metaverse platform, will be taken down by the end of March with the company separating VR from the rest of its online Metaverse experience.
‘This separation will extend across our ecosystem, including our mobile app.’
Horizon Worlds is being taken out of the Meta’s virtual reality store by March 31 and will be only available through mobile platforms.
“We are separating the two platforms [VR and Horizon] so each can grow with greater focus, and the Horizon Worlds platform will become a mobile-only experience,” Meta wrote in a community blog post. “This separation will extend across our ecosystem, including our mobile app.”
While Metaverse’s active user base is still in the hundreds of millions, the rolling losses from the platform are too much to run from. As Return previously reported, the platform has cost around $77 billion since its inception, with a significant chunk of jobs from its Reality Labs division (originally reported as 1,000-1,500) getting cut in January so Meta can prioritize wearable technology.
According to CNBC, Reality Labs posted an operating loss of $6.02 billion in a fourth-quarter earnings report in January.
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While some have signaled this is the end of the Metaverse entirely — and this is indeed a significant hit given the losses at Meta — other virtual reality experiences on the Metaverse still exist.
Some of the more popular programs include Gorilla Tag and the seemingly ever-present VR Chat. The latter was a cultural phenomenon in the early 2020s, spawning videos from content creators that ranged from streamers to pranksters to political commentators.
The multi-platform app still had an estimated 12 million users in 2025, a significant chunk of which is likely from Meta as its Quest VR headset represents a reported 52% market share.
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Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
It should be no surprise that Meta is shifting away from the virtual reality experience or even the Metaverse as a whole. The idea that once had celebrities like Snoop Dogg saying he would start a new record label on the platform has since been dwarfed by Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft as places where the youngsters hang out online.
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