Meta is backtracking on its plans to shut down the VR version of its metaverse. The company now plans to support Horizon Worlds in VR for the "foreseeable future," though users shouldn't expect new games, CTO Andrew Bosworth said in an update.
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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glad they're finally realizing the metaverse is bullshit. the term came from early cyberpunk (genre, not franchise) media to describe the internet as we know it before it was invented and properly named.
Truly a sad day for no one in particular.
It'll be a sad day for the people who lose their jobs because some idiot wasted colossal amounts of money on a delusional dream. Then again it was their choice to work for one of the most evil companies on the planet, so I don't really pity them.
Honestly I'm a little sad, and its stupid... But I wanted to share.
I have never once set... foot? inside the metaverse, but I always envisioned it ending up like the Oasis from Ready Player One (great book).
I think the concept of VR could have such crazy legs if they just get the treadmill/walking situation fully ironed out, and at a reasonable price point.
I don't think that's stupid at all.
I think the metaverse would be cool too, but I think it needs to be made by enthusiasts and not heartless corporations. Or crypto scammers. So while I don't care that Meta's shitty attempt is gone, I'm still looking forward to something cooler in the future.
People hang out in video games anyway, so hanging out in the metaverse isn't that farfetched imo.
Motherfuckers even named their company after their useless hype product and then 5 years later just quietly kill it. Peak billionaire behaviour
We taking bets on the next rebrand name?
Molt
It was "Meta", but now they're going all-in on AI, so they'll probably want to go "MetAI" except that it's lame and so are all the other various portmanteaus, so they'll pivot to something inexplicable and wild like "Everything" or "AllAI"
I'm going to guess they'll keep it and justify it as "metadata". Like the metadata of it's users that it sells
Well, by induction since the last hype was the "metaverse" and they rebranded to Meta, so because now the hype is "AI" they'll rebrand to A, or maybe Artificial.
Q.E.D.
Since there is still nothing actually worth calling "metaverse" as the sci-fi concept it was promised to be, they might go for something around AGI.
In all seriousness I really could see Zuck going for some AGI bullshit, or even ASI
Edit: oh fuck, ASImov! That's what they'll call it next
Oh great, because billionaires shitting on Tolkien wasn't enough.
AI
Nothing But Bots ™️
Dead Internet Company
AI
I can call you Meta, and Meta you can call me AI. Call me AI.
It’s like tattooing your new girlfriend’s name on your ass.
More like tattooing that name on your face.
Is that where my friend wanted me to buy "real estate" a few years ago? He said he had gotten $200,000 invested and was going to retire once he sold... I suppose we are back to the original plan now, "Chick-Fil-A Chef Until 75"
Unless it's a part of meta horizons I didn't know about (which is very possible, I interacted about 3 minutes with it), that particular metaverse might have been some crypto/NFT bullshit rather.
This sounds like something à la "decentraland" a.k.a cryptobros trying to sell plots in a terrible empty virtual world because some day it'll sell for bazillions dollars, trust us.
Wait you actually know someone that fell for that? That's nuts. I know they planned to monetize digital real estate before the metaverse even existed but I didn't realize it actually happened.
How much money was wasted on this pointless endeavour?
Oh, you know, only about 80 billion.
Could have given 10 bucks to everyone on earth, would've had more impact.
What are you, some kind of communist? Next thing you're going to say the government should spend its money on healthcare instead of bombing schoolgirls. Preposterous!
How do you spend billions of dollars and not produce any content anyone wants? What were those thousands of man-hours spent doing?
✊💦
All "AI-first" companies will do this too in 2 years.
Any half decent company would fire its CEO after that disaster.
That would be up to the shareholders. But Zuck holds the majority.
I'm sure the 6 Metaverse users are very disappointed right now