Mark Zuckerberg has closed the book on the metaverse, ending one of tech history’s most expensive experiments with a quiet announcement and a staggering bill. Meta confirmed that Horizon Worlds will be removed from the Quest VR store by the end of March and taken fully offline in virtual reality on June 15. Only a mobile app version will survive, a pale shadow of the immersive universe Zuckerberg once promised.
The metaverse era at Meta began in 2021 with a high-profile rebrand. Zuckerberg shed the Facebook name for Meta, declaring that the future of the company — and of human connection — lay in virtual worlds. He described plans for a billion-user ecosystem and a digital economy worth hundreds of billions of dollars, backed by the full resources of one of the world’s most profitable companies.
Horizon Worlds was the product designed to deliver this vision, and it failed to do so. Monthly active users reportedly never climbed above a few hundred thousand — a negligible audience for a platform that absorbed billions annually. Reality Labs, the division responsible for VR and metaverse development, reported accumulated losses approaching $80 billion over five years.
The beginning of 2025 brought a formal reckoning. More than 1,000 Reality Labs employees were laid off in January, and the company signaled a clear shift toward AI and wearable technology. The Horizon Worlds announcement followed, described in corporate terms but universally understood as the end of the metaverse experiment.
Across social media, the public was unsparing in its commentary. Many noted the disparity between the billions spent and the negligible results achieved. Others pointed out the alternative uses for such capital. For Zuckerberg, the metaverse is now a closed chapter — one that cost more than almost anyone could have imagined.