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Meta will soon shut down the virtual reality (VR) version of its social platform Horizon Worlds. The company said the platform will stop working on VR headsets from June 15, 2026. However, it won't disappear completely and continue as a mobile-only experience.
In a statement, Meta said that Horizon Worlds and Horizon Events will no longer be available on the Quest Store as of March 31. Popular VR spaces such as Horizon Central, Events Arena, Kaiju, and Bobber Bay will also be taken down.
"You can still jump into your other favourite worlds in VR until June 15, 2026, after which the Horizon Worlds app will be removed from Quest, and Worlds will no longer be available in VR," Meta said.
"We are separating the two platforms so each can grow with greater focus, and the Horizon Worlds platform will become a mobile-only experience," the company said.
The shift in Horizon Worlds' strategy also comes amid turbulence within Meta's metaverse division. Just weeks earlier, the company cut over 1,000 jobs from Reality Labs, which handles VR and metaverse development. It has racked up nearly $80 billion in losses since 2020,
The layoffs, announced in January, also impacted teams working directly on VR content. Among those hit was Ouro Interactive, an in-house studio launched in 2023 to build first-party experiences for Horizon Worlds.
The platform reportedly attracted only a few hundred thousand monthly active users - far below expectations for a project that saw billions of dollars in investment.
"We are shifting focus of Worlds to be almost exclusively mobile. We're in a strong position to deliver synchronous social games at scale, thanks to our unique ability to connect those games with billions of people on the world's biggest social network," said Samantha Ryan, Reality Labs' VP of content.
Back in October 2021, when Facebook rebranded itself as Meta, it was a clear signal that the company was going all-in on the Metaverse . At the time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the metaverse as "the next frontier" of the Internet.
"Our hope is that within the next decade, the Metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers," said Zuckerberg.
In a statement, Meta said that Horizon Worlds and Horizon Events will no longer be available on the Quest Store as of March 31. Popular VR spaces such as Horizon Central, Events Arena, Kaiju, and Bobber Bay will also be taken down.
"You can still jump into your other favourite worlds in VR until June 15, 2026, after which the Horizon Worlds app will be removed from Quest, and Worlds will no longer be available in VR," Meta said.
"We are separating the two platforms so each can grow with greater focus, and the Horizon Worlds platform will become a mobile-only experience," the company said.
The shift in Horizon Worlds' strategy also comes amid turbulence within Meta's metaverse division. Just weeks earlier, the company cut over 1,000 jobs from Reality Labs, which handles VR and metaverse development. It has racked up nearly $80 billion in losses since 2020,
The layoffs, announced in January, also impacted teams working directly on VR content. Among those hit was Ouro Interactive, an in-house studio launched in 2023 to build first-party experiences for Horizon Worlds.
The platform reportedly attracted only a few hundred thousand monthly active users - far below expectations for a project that saw billions of dollars in investment.
"We are shifting focus of Worlds to be almost exclusively mobile. We're in a strong position to deliver synchronous social games at scale, thanks to our unique ability to connect those games with billions of people on the world's biggest social network," said Samantha Ryan, Reality Labs' VP of content.
Back in October 2021, when Facebook rebranded itself as Meta, it was a clear signal that the company was going all-in on the Metaverse . At the time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the metaverse as "the next frontier" of the Internet.
"Our hope is that within the next decade, the Metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers," said Zuckerberg.
