Mark Zuckerberg’s dream project, the metaverse, is slowly falling apart. Since, the Meta CEO is now overseeing job cuts and a closure of the company’s flagship virtual reality platform. Therefore, many experts are predicting that the metaverse is bound to shut down since it has failed to deliver the user adoption rate promised.
Amidst all of this, Meta has now also confirmed that Horizon Worlds, its virtual reality platform, will no longer be supported on VR devices after June 15, 2026. The Horizon app will thereafter also be removed from the Meta Quest store by the end of March, though it will continue to work as a mobile-only platform.
Massive Layoffs at Meta
Meta’s decision to curtail its plans of investing and expanding into the Metaverse comes in the middle of layoffs in the Reality Labs division. According to Moneycontrol, over 1,000 jobs were cut in January 2026. However, some reports suggest more layoffs are going to come as Meta is shifting its focus towards artificial intelligence and AI-enabled wearables.
Why is Meta downsizing the Metaverse?
According to a former Reality Labs employee who posted on LinkedIn criticizing the internal leadership of Meta. He suggested that the Metaverse project failed due to misaligned priorities.
He wrote, “The Metaverse had real legs but was obliterated by middle management completely out of touch with how young people actually use technology.”
Vasuman Moza also shared an example of a project being sidelined despite its relevance. “I built a V1 tool that game developers genuinely needed, and the moment it was done, it got shipped to a team in London (to die),” he said. “I was reassigned to a ‘higher-priority project’ that zero developers asked for.”
He added that such patterns were widespread, stating, “Multiply that by every team, and you’ll understand why this never took off yet cost 80 billion.”
Why did the metaverse struggle?
Horizon Worlds failed to gain significant traction among people, never surpassing a few hundred thousand monthly active users and drawing criticism for its limited features and technical shortcomings.
Although Meta rebranded in 2021 to emphasize its metaverse ambitions, the platform struggled to expand beyond early adopters.
As interest in the metaverse declined, the company shifted its strategy toward artificial intelligence and hardware.
Its smart glasses, including Ray-Ban Meta devices, have performed relatively well, selling over 7 million units.
Meta is also investing heavily in AI through its Superintelligence Lab and targeted acquisitions, signaling a clear pivot from virtual worlds to developing advanced, agentic AI-driven products.