"This is my home," says one user as Meta prepares to wind down key features of Horizon Worlds, its flagship VR social platform. Inside a virtual comedy club, performers and regulars are gathering for what might be their final shows, mourning the loss of a community they built in the metaverse. The shutdown marks another retreat from Mark Zuckerberg's $36 billion bet on virtual reality, leaving dedicated users scrambling to preserve what they created.
Meta just pulled the rug out from under its most devoted believers. Deep inside Horizon Worlds, the company's virtual reality social platform, a comedy club is hosting its swan song. Performers are cracking jokes to avatars in the crowd, but the laughter feels bittersweet. Everyone knows the punchline - Meta's moving on, and they're getting left behind.
"This is my home," one regular tells Wired, capturing the raw emotion as users watch their virtual sanctuary disappear. It's not just about the technology - these people built real friendships, honed comedy chops, and found community in a digital space that Meta's now abandoning.
The irony cuts deep. Just three years ago, Mark Zuckerberg renamed his entire company to Meta, betting the farm on the metaverse. He poured over $36 billion into Reality Labs, promising virtual worlds would be the next computing platform. Now, with that vision fading, the casualties aren't just financial - they're human.
Meta's strategic retreat has been brutal and swift. The company's shifted focus to AI development, racing to catch OpenAI and Google in the generative AI wars. Horizon Worlds, once positioned as the flagship of Meta's metaverse ambitions, has become collateral damage. User numbers never reached the critical mass Zuckerberg promised investors, and internal metrics showed engagement dropping quarter after quarter.
But inside that VR comedy club, the numbers told a different story. A small, dedicated community kept showing up. They learned to build worlds using Meta's creation tools, organized regular events, and genuinely cared about the space they'd created together. Now they're facing digital eviction, with nowhere obvious to go.
