Recently, I found out that Meta reversed its decision to shut down Horizon Worlds in VR. Basically, the company had announced that it would stop supporting the experience on Quest headsets starting in March, but it seems that user pressure was so strong that they changed their minds.

The interesting part is that Andrew Bosworth, Meta's CTO, confirmed in an Instagram AMA that they are keeping Horizon Worlds running in VR for existing games. But here’s the key point: they will not develop new games for the virtual reality platform. Meta’s full focus now is on mobile, where apparently the metaverse experience is gaining more traction.

VR users didn’t take it well when they heard about the shutdown. People argued that the mobile version doesn’t offer the same immersion you get with headsets. So Meta listened to the feedback and decided to keep what already exists operational.

Samantha Ryan, Vice President of Content at Reality Labs, had already indicated in February that the move was “all in on mobile.” It seems that strategy is yielding better results than what they expected with VR.

What caught my attention is the financial context behind all this. Reality Labs, Meta’s division dedicated to the metaverse, has accumulated over $80 billion in operating losses since its creation in 2020. The division has not even become profitable. Bosworth himself acknowledged that the industry simply didn’t grow at the expected pace.

This also comes after the massive layoffs in January, when Meta cut around 1,500 employees, most of them from Reality Labs. It’s a pretty significant shift considering Meta once bet everything on the metaverse as the future. Now they’re clearly pivoting toward where they see more viability: mobile platforms.