Meta shuts down Horizon Worlds VR "Zuckerberg's dream shattered": burned $8.35 billion without even 900 users online

Meta announces the closure of Horizon Worlds VR version on June 15, 2026, transitioning to a mobile-only app, marking the end of its metaverse gamble with over $83.5 billion in losses; this decade-long vision once called the “next frontier” by Zuckerberg, ends with fewer than 900 daily active users.
(Background: Meta cuts 10% of its metaverse division again! After burning $70 billion, Zuckerberg admits defeat and shifts focus to AI)
(Additional context: The Wall Street Journal mocks Meta’s metaverse! Internal report: Most Horizon users leave within a month, with only 200,000 monthly active users)

Table of Contents

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• The promise of 2021, the bill of 2026
• Employees, studios, an era
• The end of the metaverse narrative, the mirror of Web3

Burning $83.5 billion over six years to reach a user peak: fewer than 900 daily active users. According to CNBC, Meta officially announced the shutdown of Horizon Worlds VR version, which will be fully offline by June 15, 2026. The Quest store will remove the app by the end of March.

Meta stated: “We are splitting the two platforms to allow each to grow more focused. Horizon Worlds will become a purely mobile experience.” The mobile app will continue operating in a manner similar to Roblox, but the core vision of VR social interaction is now history.

The promise of 2021, the bill of 2026

In October 2021, Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta, declaring: “Our vision is that within the next ten years, the metaverse will reach one billion people and support hundreds of billions of dollars in digital commerce.”

The reality is cold and precise: long-term monthly active users below 200,000, daily active users once dropping below 900. Most users leave Horizon Worlds within a month of joining.

The financial toll is staggering. Meta’s Reality Labs has accumulated losses of over $83.55 billion since 2020, burning $19.19 billion in 2025 alone—revenue was only $2.2 billion, with losses nearly nine times revenue. In Q4 2025, losses hit $6.02 billion, averaging about $67 million per day.

Employees, studios, an era

The decision to shut down Horizon Worlds VR impacts over 1,000 employees. Studios like Ouro Interactive were directly closed. Meta had already cut 10% of its metaverse-related staff in 2025; this shutdown is the final reckoning.

Bloomberg reported this earlier, later confirmed and detailed by CNBC. Meta’s focus has shifted entirely to AI—Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have become the flagship product, with augmented reality (AR) replacing virtual reality (VR) as the main hardware focus.

After the VR version’s closure, Meta plans to invest $150 million in the VR developer ecosystem in 2025, but the direction has shifted from social worlds to professional tools and gaming applications.

The end of the metaverse narrative, the mirror of Web3

The fall of Horizon Worlds is not just Meta’s story. Between 2021 and 2022, the metaverse was one of the hottest narratives in the crypto industry—land in Decentraland sold for millions, The Sandbox attracted brands eager to participate, and NFT virtual real estate became a speculative buzzword.

Meta’s exit exposes the bubble’s core issues: immature technology, high user experience barriers, and the absence of killer applications. Even Meta, with billions of users and unlimited capital, couldn’t sustain an active virtual world.

For Web3 protocols still building the metaverse/open worlds, this outcome is both a warning and an opportunity: when the biggest player admits defeat, the question remains—who can truly find reasons for people to stay?