Meta Is Not Shutting Down The VR Metaverse Yet - Here's What's Staying

Meta Is Not Shutting Down The VR Metaverse Yet - Here's What's Staying

Soon after announcing that Horizon Worlds would be discontinued, Meta has taken a sharp U-turn. Here's what that means for the metaverse and the Quest headset.

The Comedy Club at the End of the Metaverse

“This is my home”: At a VR comedy club in Horizon Worlds, users mourn Meta's plans for the platform.

Meet the People Devastated by the End of the Metaverse’s Horizon Worlds

It’s Sunday night at the Soapstone Comedy Club: improv night. MissDelRey takes to the stage in a skintight red dress and gladiator sandals. Her co-host is dressed a bit like one of the Blues Brothers. Her skin is turquoise. The first act is called “write me a letter”—members of the audience each offer up a single word that together forms a side-splitting sentence. This week’s prompt: a formal complaint. Someone called Bethany offers up “areola.”…

The People Left Behind by the Metaverse

When Meta announced its plan to shut down Horizon Worlds last week a lot of us laughed. Social scientist Dr Ruth Diaz was not one of them. Diaz worked for Meta as a VR community design developer in the early days of the Horizon Worlds project and left in 2022. After Meta’s announcement last week, Diaz wrote a post on LinkedIn attempting to articulate her feelings. “I cannot overstate the scale of institutional betrayal this represents,” she said…

Meta to shutdown its VR metaverse in June 2026

Meta is shutting down the virtual reality version of its social platform, Horizon Worlds, on its Quest headsets, marking a major retreat from its earlier metaverse ambitions. The app will be removed from the Quest Store starting March 31, 2026, and the full VR experience will end by June 15. After that, Horizon Worlds will continue only as a mobile platform rather than a VR one. This decision reflects a broader shift in Meta’s strategy. The comp…