Metaverse plans at Meta have narrowed as the company announced it will remove Horizon Worlds from the Meta Quest store on March 31 and shut the VR version on June 15, 2026, while keeping a mobile-only app.
Horizon Worlds launched in 2021 on the Meta Quest headset and hosted branded spaces from ESPN, the National Basketball Association and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, yet the VR experience struggled to sustain user engagement over time.
Estimates of monthly active users at its peak in 2022 ranged from 200,000 to 500,000, with reports that daily active users sometimes fell below 1,000, and the platform failed to build must-see experiences that kept players returning.
Meta has invested heavily in its Reality Labs division since 2020, a sum reported as KES 10.4 trillion, roughly equivalent to $80 billion, and internal restructuring has included trimming 10 percent of Reality Labs staff and shuttering internal development studios.
Impact On Developers Users And Strategy
Developers who built assets and games for Horizon Worlds now face sudden depreciation of their digital storefronts, and users may lose in-app perks such as digital assets, credits and avatar items as the VR environment goes dark.
Meta said it will separate the VR and mobile platforms so each can grow with greater focus, and the company intends Horizon Worlds to become a mobile-only experience that will compete with platforms like Fortnite and Roblox.
The company appears to be shifting resources toward mobile-first products and AI alongside augmented reality hardware, including Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, and reports say Meta is investing in its Superintelligence Lab.
Former Reality Labs employees criticized management decisions, with one ex-employee, Vasuman Moza, blaming middle management for choices that hurt the project, and industry observers said the moves mirror a wider pivot away from hardware-first metaverse investment.
For regions such as Nairobi and East Africa the shift underscores a preference for mobile solutions, and observers noted the metaverse experiment highlighted the high cost and data demands that limited global VR adoption.
