Last month, Meta announced Horizon Worlds was going “almost exclusively mobile”, which included removing Worlds suggestions and generally deemphasizing the immersive social platform on Quest. Now, the company says it’s pulling the plug on Quest support entirely in June.
Released in 2021, Horizon Worlds was meant to be Meta’s flagship metaverse app, essentially serving as the impetus for its rebranding away from Facebook and Oculus. The platform struggled early on with low retention though, which translated to limited appeal among VR users, prompting Meta to open it up to mobile users in 2023.
Now, Meta announced via its official Discord (invite) that come March 31st, Horizon Worlds and Events will no longer appear in the Store on Quest. This is said to include the removal of Horizon Central, Events Arena, Kaiju, and Bobber Bay worlds from Quest access.
What’s more, come June 15th, Meta is removing the Horizon Worlds app entirely from Quest, which means that worlds will no longer be available in VR in any capacity after that date.
Additionally, Meta is removing its spatial ‘Hyperscape’ captures from Horizon Worlds come March 24th. “Your existing captures will remain viewable within the Hyperscape Capture (Beta) app, which is available in your Quest app library,” Meta says. “You can continue capturing new Hyperscapes, but sharing, inviting, and co-experiencing Hyperscapes with others will no longer be supported.”
Notably, Meta shuttered its work-focused Horizon Workrooms platform last month, which allowed Quest and non-Quest users to interact in an immersive environment.
This comes amid a wider shift in Reality Labs, which recently saw layoffs affecting 10 percent of the XR division in addition to the closure of three first-party XR studios which resulted in multiple game cancellations.
Meta has said it’s still funding third-party titles in addition to its current plans to release two new VR headsets, which include a possible successor to Quest 3 as well as a thin and light headset that tethers to a compute puck.
