Meta decides not to shut down Horizon Worlds on VR after all

According to an Instagram post from Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth, Meta is not shutting down VR support for Horizon Worlds after all, which should come as a huge relief to, like, five people. “We have decided, just today in fact, that we will keep Horizon Worlds working in VR,” Bosworth said as part of an Instagram Stories Q&A after a fan of the app reached out to say they were “heartbroken” about the decision. A Meta spokesperson confirmed Bosworth’s comments to TechCrunch. Meta indicated earlier this year that it would stop supporting the social metaverse app on its Quest virtual reality headsets, which was a big concession for an app that Meta once envisioned as central to socializing in VR. As it turned out, very few people actually wanted to hang out in VR. On Tuesday, Meta confirmed on its community forums that Horizon Worlds would move to web and mobile only on June 15, but that announcement was quickly reversed. Even if Horizon Worlds will now remain accessible via Quest, the fact that Meta planned to shut it down is proof enough that the metaverse — or at least how it was imagined in VR — turned out to be a black hole where Reality Labs funding went to die. That division at Meta has lost $73 billion since 2021, the year that Meta rebranded from Facebook. As we pointed out previously, you’d have to spend $1 million per day for 200 years to spend that much money. (Reality Labs also accounts for spending on augmented reality products like smart glasses, as well as some AI research.) According to the IDC, a tech market intelligence firm, Meta’s Quest headset sales were down 16% year-over-year from 2024 to 2025, making it seem unlikely that this hardware will ever meaningfully compete with the smartphone. It’s not just Meta that has struggled to make virtual reality compelling — Apple had to scale back production of its $3,500 Vision Pro headset due to low demand. Meta has responded to this decline by making significant cuts in its Reality Labs division in January, impacting over 1,500 employees and shuttering several game studios. Rumor has it that Meta is considering another, more significant round of layoffs, which could impact 20% of the company. Though Meta will continue supporting Horizon Worlds for the Quest headset, the company still plans to prioritize the mobile experience. Bosworth said on a podcast with journalist Alex Heath that Horizon had shifted focus to mobile since it had better product-market fit there. “There’s a much bigger audience in mobile, and it’s having a really positive pickup on mobile,” Bosworth said about the app. “[The team] is having to build everything twice — they’re building it once for the mobile phone, and they’re building it again for VR. There’s a pretty easy way to increase their velocity, which is just like, let them build for mobile.” Mobile intelligence firm Appfigures told TechCrunch that the Horizon Worlds mobile app has seen 45 million total worldwide downloads across iOS and Google Play, with 1.5 million downloads so far in 2026. That’s a 53% year-over-year increase compared to last year, when the Horizon Worlds app had around 983,000 downloads at this point. However, Appfigures estimates that consumers have spent just $1.1 million in total consumer spending on the app, which is pocket change compared to the size of Meta’s investments in the metaverse. Bosworth is right that there’s a greater opportunity for Horizon Worlds on mobile than on the Quest headset — but Meta will need to see a lot more consumer spending for the app to prove a worthwhile investment. Topics Apps, Horizon Worlds, Meta, metaverse, Social Amanda Silberling Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. You can contact or verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at @amanda.100 on Signal.

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