Following a mass layoff at Meta late last year which affected 11,000 of its employees, the company announced today that it would be laying off another 10,000 workers through multiple rounds.

Update (March 14th, 2023):  According to a Facebook post by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Meta is laying off an additional 10,000 employees across multiple rounds. It’s also set to close hiring for 5,000 open roles, and cancel more low-priority projects. Layoffs are said to begin this week, first hitting the company’s recruiting organization. A second weave in late April will affect tech roles, while a third in late May will affect business roles.

In the post, Zuckerberg calls this the “Year of Efficiency,” which the Meta chief says will optimize distributed work, increase developer productivity and tooling, and make the organization flatter by removing multiple layers of management. Zuckerberg also hopes to make it leaner by prioritizing higher-priority projects.

Notably, Zuckerberg doesn’t mention specific projects, or XR in any capacity. Meanwhile, the company has lowered the price of both Quest 2 and Quest Pro before the launch of Quest 3, which has come amid reports that Meta is planning a cheaper follow-up to Quest 3 in 2024 in addition to its AR projects.

The original article detailing the first large layoff round follows below:

Original Article (November 9th, 2022): Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said this in an internal memo obtained by Reuters:

“Not only has online commerce returned to [pre-covid] prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected,” Zuckerberg said. “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”

Meta plans to cut discretionary spending and extend its hiring freeze through the first quarter, Reuters maintains. Laid off Meta employees are said to receive 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service, as well as all remaining paid time off, as a part of the severance package.

It’s not certain what percentage of layoffs will affect those working in Reality Labs. We’ve reached out to Meta for further comment and will update this if/when we hear back.

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Trouble in XR Paradise?

Meta’s most recent quarterly earnings spelled trouble when it was released last month. Close to celebrating its first year after rebranding from Facebook to become a self-described ‘metaverse’ company, Meta battled slumping revenues across multiple divisions, not least of which was its XR centerpiece Reality Labs, which took an expected hit that didn’t sit right with investors.

While Meta has been aggressively spending on its XR division over the past few years, its recent shift away from Facebook amid all-time low revenues and record inflation has made layoffs almost a guarantee to keep stock prices from plummeting further.

Back in May, Reuters reported that hiring freezes would affect Reality Labs, which has added more than 13,000 employees last year and nearly 6,000 in the first quarter this year.

Zuckerberg warned at the time that Reality Labs probably wouldn’t truly profit for at least decade. In the meantime, the Meta’s XR efforts has cost the company $10.2 billion in 2021 and another $3 billion in the first quarter this year.

Meanwhile, Meta has just released its $1,500 Meta Quest Pro mixed reality headset for prosumers and business, and plans to release a consumer-focused follow-up, likely dubbed Quest 3, sometime in 2023.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Papias

    I wish Meta would put John Carmack in charge of the metaverse. They need to focus on user experience and performance if they want people to use it. They need to get the dollar signs out of their eyes.

    • Pyroth3093

      Carmack was one of the drivers toward the Mobile nonsense. I don’t think he’s the right person for the job.

      • ViRGiN

        LMAO, the mobile “nonsense” is sole reason you can even boot into PCVR.

        • Pyroth3093

          ? I have a rift cv1, index, reverb g2, samsung odssey+ and a Varjo Aero….and none of them have low grade botton of the barrel crappy mobile VR.

          • ViRGiN

            yet you’re playing Gorilla Tag and Rec Room.
            also, do you have 5 heads or what?

          • Pyroth3093

            Mostly play simulations. I’ve been using VR since 2016 so that’s my upgrade path. I also have a Quest 2 but I hardly ever use it. It’s sub par.

          • ViRGiN

            I’ve been using VR since 2012, at home since 2013. I’ve seen it all. PCVR is a joke at all fronts – except the extremisticly extreme niche which is simulators. You are literally target of not a single company. People like you don’t make even a tiny market in VR sphere.
            Calling Quest 2 subpar just shows your snobism.

          • Pyroth3093

            Disagree with it being a joke. The modding community alone makes it great. I play many games just my focus is Simulators. Considering the difference in power from my 4090 and a mobile GPU…it’s just not even in the same galaxy of capability and graphical fidelity. That’s why Mobile VR is bombing. It’s fun for a few and then the luster wears off and all you’re left with is PS2 quality graphics and mostly shallow bad games.

          • ViRGiN

            No, the modding community doesn’t make it alone great. They are literally keeping the last samurais of PCVR from boxing their expensive and outdated PC/VR rigs.
            Stop talking about non-VR games on VR sites. Let’s talk about real VR games. And talk about it without using “Alyx” or “BoneX”

          • shadow9d9

            Jankware plus “graphic fidelity,” which just outs you right there as completely out of touch with gaming.

          • Pyroth3093

            If you saw what Cyberpunk 2077 or Red Dead Redemption looked like on my rig, you’d hardly think it’s a joke.

          • ViRGiN

            No doubt high-end PC AAA games look great rendered in VR, but they are not VR games at all. They are 3D TV games with xbox controllers. Absolutetly nothing new here. VorpX came out in 2013 or 2014. It’s been a thing for nearly a decade.

          • Pyroth3093

            I was referring to Lukeross RealVR mods but yea lack of Motion Controls is a fair point even if I find them to be pointless in most games. They work great in Alyx and Lone Echo.

          • ViRGiN

            You know very well that a real GTA 5 with VR support is a VR seller. These mods don’t sell anything, just entice a promile of percentage of users to not disconnect their VR set up permanently. It’s trash. And you only see it as positive, cause native PCVR is really trash, excluding extreme niche use case for simulators.
            Alyx hype is long gone, it’s as relevant as Mario 64 – there are millions of people who still haven’t played it, but that doesn’t change anything. Lone Echo is also not the type of game that ‘one size fits all’ – it’s a cool experience, but guaranteed, just as much as alyx – that 75% will never finish even half of the game. They all crawl back to Beat Saber and stuff.

          • Pyroth3093

            Except that’s already more than I can get on the crappy mobile games. I’m not saying PCVR is the best thing ever…but it’s better than anything Mobile VR offers. There’s many other games I’ve enjoyed more than any of the mobile VR games I’ve tried and I’ve tried over 100 on Quest 2. They’re mostly crap. The immersion and realism I get from Simulations and modded games far surpasses anything Mobile can do is my point. It’s just really bad VR. I’ve already preordered PSVR 2 with hopes that it can at least provide something that looks semi realistic with its Dynamic Foveated rendering that should at least give us something close to a 3070 or maybe even a 3080 in performance. Mobile VR sucks..and I’m glad Meta is bombing. Their vision of VR is something I want no part of. I’d rather go back to monitor gaming.

          • ViRGiN

            Well, you did. Stop bringing up simulators cause those are a completly different genre and always has been outside of anything resembling main stream or adoption. Again, you, and all simulator fans in vr combined does not create a market. You have no voice here. If you enjoy it, that’s awesome. Cockpit games are one of the most natural fits for VR. But nobody cares about those outside your circle. I don’t even understand what’s the point of expressing how shitty your experience with the Quest 2 was – the numbers speaks for themselves. PCVR is dead. Just because you can access flat games, that again is not a selling point and did not increase adoption, neither boosted sales of flat games. It’s totally irrelevant, and just shows how bad PCVR is. It’s NEVER about the headset. Those are far beyond bare minimum acceptable level of quality – it’s always about software. And PCVR respresent development kit for mobile games, cause sure as hell there is no PC in PCVR games for 99% of ever released software.

          • Point

            “PCVR is dead”.
            Lmao, that’s hilarious.

          • ViRGiN

            Some react with laughter to devastating news.
            I totally get you.

          • shadow9d9

            PCVR is dead for all intents and purposes, and has been so for years. It sells a pathetic amount in terms of numbers, so no one is funding development as a result.

          • shadow9d9

            Graphics are not the end all of games.

          • Pyroth3093

            Red Dead Redemption 2*

      • Jonathan Winters III

        Without the “mobile nonsense”, Oculus/Meta would have ceased to exist years ago, along with the majority of the VR market.

        • Pyroth3093

          I’m not sure that would be a bad thing at this point. The VR Meta currently envisions isn’t one I want to be a part of anyway. Hopefully PSVR 2 is a hit and we get some ports. At least that can render modern graphics through Dynamic Foveated Rendering.

          • Alexisms

            I was excited for PSVR2 but at a cost higher than than the ps5 itself i’m not going to bother. I don’t think that could have launched/will launch at a worse time, sadly.

          • Pyroth3093

            I hear that, but quality costs money. Add on inflation…and parts are very expensive at the moment. They don’t have much choice.

          • Alexisms

            They could do what various manufacturers have done in the past… sell at a loss until the costs come down enough to make a profit on the hardware. This gets more units into peoples hands, increases software sales which also brings in revenue. Short term pain for long term gain.

          • Pyroth3093

            They likely already are. Have you looked closely at the feature list? It’s a massive upgrade from the original PSVR.

      • shadow9d9

        The “mobile nonsense” has allowed the Nintendo Switch to near 3rd best selling console of all time. No one cares.

    • Bob

      No that wouldn’t work because 1) Carmack isn’t a leader. He’s not good with people, 2) Carmack doesn’t believe in the concept of the Metaverse and has been pretty open about it in all of his talks, 3) Carmack is currently extremely pre-occupied with general AI research for Meta.

      • Not “for Meta”. While consulting one day a week at Meta, he runs his own venture-backed AGI company Keen Technologies the rest of the time.

        • Bob

          Not in any “official capacity”. His AI research is funded by Meta but it’s not disclosed. He was pressed to pursue this route and reduce his working days at Meta to one day a week in a consulting position.

          • ViRGiN

            Source? Can’t just make claims like that without any evidence.
            I remember watching 5+ hours interview with Carmack, and I remember him saying that he didn’t want to take other people money cause then he is pressured to deliver something. He put his own money onto table.

          • Sven

            In a more recent talk he said he recently allowed investors on board (for a relatively small total investment) to give himself motivation to work harder so as not to waste other people’s money. It sounded to me more like it was individual investors rather than Meta, though. Not impossible Mark is one of them I suppose.

    • ViRGiN

      I wouldn’t trust someone who did not see user benefit in 6DOF controllers in VR to lead the metaverse movement.

      • Max-Dmg

        I wouldnt trust you.

        • ViRGiN

          Because I put racist & insulting comments every 10 minutes ?

          • Max-Dmg

            Not just that.

    • sfmike

      Meta is a corporation and dollar signs are the reason for their existence in our predatory capitalist society.

  • Papias

    The mobile processor is probably too weak currently to handle the metaverse. Maybe development should shift to the Xbox.

    • Runesr2

      Yes, no one cares for bottom-end phoneVR in the long run, and Meta can’t make their visions come true with graphics looking worse than Half-Life 2 from 2004, lol.
      Well, unlucky Meta employees might now get the opportunity to spend much more time in phoneVR and Horizon, what’s not to love about that…

      • ViRGiN

        get that ps5, job simulator and other quest games will play wonderfully while tethered.

      • MeowMix

        such a toxic comment

      • shadow9d9

        10 million sold, which is exponentially more than anyone else. Phone gaming, the Switch, is about to break into 3rd best selling console of all time. You are out of touch.

        • MOT

          The difference is the switch is home to some of the greatest videos games and most beloved franchises of all time. The quest, not so much.

    • ViRGiN

      RPO-alike metaverse is only possible with cloud computing.
      Internet will always get faster and more accessible – powerful hardware in homes – never. GTX1060 is the most popular GPU according to Steam.
      And you need internet to access it anyway.

      • Papias

        Edge computing has been promised for a while now. But it hasn’t scaled yet. Companies don’t seem to be willing to spend the money scale it. Cloud computing would have too much latency for VR. You would probably need edge computing to achieve what you are talking about.

        • ViRGiN

          Not exactly. Even carmack spoke about it, and low-key “stole” my idea that you don’t have to stream everything. You could have part of the app rendered locally, like your own avatar, so the tracking is never disconnected. Moving in 3D space – masked with depth maps to mitigate latency etc. I don’t know where you guys live and what internet is available to you – even fps vr shooters are totally playable from cloud computers like Shadow, which had zero optimizations done for VR. A true, build for VR solution could only perform better, and would roll out gradually, just like Horizon.
          Rumours were that Meta is already working on streaming PCVR games from the cloud, but we’ll see what comes out of it after today news. But streaming VR today is totally acceptable, and it’s not barely acceptable level or putting up with it, it simply works.

    • sfmike

      More like shift to PlayStation as Microsoft and the XBox is only concerned about keeping corporate profits high and have already shown they have no real interest in VR. How many times do they have to show their half a**ed attempts at a headset and lack of support.

  • FrankB

    Horizon is a pretty horrible meta verse experience, they should have run off PC, not the underpowered Quest. Having said that AltSpace VR and Rec Room both run way better than Horizon on standalone Quest 2 hardware.

    • I get comparing it to AltSpace and Rec Room, but it’s also important to note those experiences released 5 years before Horizon did, which has only been out for about a year. Altspace is basically dead and Rec Room released with a small set of features. But I do agree that, at the moment at least, it seems like Meta has bitten off more than they can chew with Horizon. Really wish they hadn’t canned Oculus Rooms, that would have been a great platform to grow from.

  • TeddyLoo

    It turns out that strangers are just as terrible to be around in virtual reality as they are in real life. Doubly so strangers between the ages of 9-15. The problem of the troll hasn’t been solved in open discussion forums much less in VR social spaces. The problem of deep political divisions across the world and within countries hasn’t been resolved anywhere. I guess what I’m trying to say it’s a difficult time to create a metaverse from a sociological perspective even if the technological issues were overcome.

    • I mean, you’re posting here in an open forum with strangers. What inspired you to do so? It’s possible you could be side swiped by a troll at any moment, but you’re still here. There must be some inherent value to all of this despite the risks, right?

      • silvaring

        Clearly the inherent value is much more on the side of social media platforms like twitter and whatsapp right now, along with traditional websites like these that don’t require massively cumbersome steps just to interact with.

    • BananaBreadBoy

      I mean, block/report buttons and cultivating friend lists are a good start.

  • Rudl Za Vedno

    Zuckerberg wrote: “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”
    Wrong, 11,000 of your employees took “responsibility” for your mistakes.

    • VR5

      Zuckerberg wrote: “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.”
      Wrong, 11,000 of your employees took “responsibility” for your mistakes.

      Since you put responsibility in quotation marks you apparently already understand that you’re misusing the term but to point it out explicitly: Responsible is the one that has to answer to the question: who made this mistake? The mistake being hiring staff Zuckerberg could not afford to pay for long term. If Zuckerberg hadn’t made that mistake they would never have been hired in the first place.

      • Rudl Za Vedno

        Semantics. The fact is 11,000 of his employees are F***ed while he’ll stay a billionaire no matter what.

        • VR5

          It’s not semantics. You have two scenarios: (a) they never get hired. (b) Zuck can’t afford them and needs to fire them. Outcome is the same, they don’t work for Meta.

          Covid boost was temporary, contest from TikTok is not. Apple disabling ad tracking on iOs also didn’t help.

          • Rudl Za Vedno

            Cudos for defending evil corporation and it’s owner.

          • VR5

            Considering how well Meta is paying and the amazing severence conditions the fired staff get I wouldn’t say they’re evil.

          • Rudl Za Vedno

            16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service is good severence now? I got 18 months pay when I got sacked in IT company back in 2013. I’d take them to court if they’d offer me anything less.

          • kool

            Dude i was a real estate appraiser during the crash of 08 and a v technician my job was based off of super spreaders during the pandemic. Both times working for myself black with a high school education no severance. I updated my resume and im fine now, i understand most people couldn’t bounce back like i did but its creates an opportunity to make yourself stronger good luck.

          • VR5

            Yes it is. How much do you think they’re owed by the law?

          • Arno van Wingerde

            It rather depends where you are: in Africa it is likely zero, the US is probably close to that and in civilized countries it is a lot more.

          • VR5

            We have a concrete case here if you want to contribute any actual information. But I guess you just wanted to insult Africa and the US as uncivilized.

          • Alexisms

            The USA has no legally binding paid vacation days for employees, no paid maternity leave for fathers or even mothers, no compassionate leave for employees losing their family, no universal health care. I’d say that’s pretty uncivilised.

          • VR5

            I’d say the US is uncivilized because they have the death penalty. Those are opinions. Not worth arguing here/besides the point.

            You’re just further derailing this thread. The poster before you did that in a racist way. By pretending the term uncivilized is helpful in this discussion you’re aiding their racism.

            Considering the accusation was that “FB is evil” it certainly drew out evil (in this case racist) voices.

            Meta has very good working conditions btw (according to your own stated expectations) so is your opinion that Meta is more “civilized” than the American average? If you’re interested in the earlier topic of “evil”, do you think Meta is not notably “evil”?

            If you want to dicuss, you need to be concise and keep track of what is actually argued. Not create new goal posts to make the reader forget where the thread came from.

          • Alexisms

            no, i can explain in my own words why the usa is uncivilised. Simple as that. You can take my reasons on board or ignore them completely, i don’t mind.

          • VR5

            To repeat: (a) the question “is the US uncivilized?” is offtopic, it doesn’t contribute to the thread. So why even post it other than to amplify the earlier poster’s racism?

            (b) You may be of the opinion that the US is uncivilized, but that isn’t according to the definition of the word, not with the reasons you listed.

            Of course you “can explain in your own words why YOU THINK the usa is uncivilized.” But it is besides the point.

          • Alexisms

            No it’s entirely the point. You keep banging on about it. Comments are for opinions of which mine and yours are just two.

          • VR5

            Which previously established point does your statement attack though? You list some facts, then provide an opinion that this is “uncivilized”, which is problematic for the reasons I gave. The problem is, if you list unrelated facts, your post is just spam. If you intended your post as a relevant reply to previous statements you don’t explain yourself well, actually not at all.

          • Alexisms

            I’m afraid if you can’t underestand why my list of reasons usa is uncivilised you can’t understand as to the reasons that the usa is uncivilised. There’s nothing that can be done for you at this point.

          • ViRGiN

            Some people would love firing people becoming illegal and punishable by 20 years in jail.

          • Arno van Wingerde

            Nice try, but OTOH: if people had not been spending all that money on VR stuff, they would have spent it somewhere else, thereby creating lots of jobs for florists, bakers, travel agencies and what have you… ah economics, got to love it!

          • VR5

            Most of the covid boost came from people being on FB and IG, which are free services so they didn’t spend any money at all.

            Also, the people hired couldn’t work in the professions you’re listing. Not to mention your reply is completely off topic and doesn’t address anything stated previously in the thread of posts you added your own reply to.

          • johnyjazz

            Your analysis only holds if the only ones being fired were the ones hired during the rapid mistaken expansion – this wasn’t the case so your premise is incorrect.

          • VR5

            You’re right and this occured to me after I wrote it also, it’s not all the same people who were hired and later fired. It might also not be the exact number of people hired in that period. But in principle the view is not entirely wrong. During that short lived corona boom more people were hired than was sustainable.

        • ViRGiN

          Is it Meta responsibility to employ these people till death or what?

          • kool

            I mean he kinda did promise them that on the metaverse…

          • ViRGiN

            kinda, or he did?
            these people accepted the jobs with guarantee of work for certain amount of time. if these people are laid off earlier, they will still get paid for the remaining time.
            it’s not like he doesn’t want these people. it’s just unsustainable at the moment.
            online nerds often said that meta stole all the good employees and that’s why there is little to no competition.
            let’s see how much competitors will go out of their way to snatch these talents.

          • kool

            It was an satirical observation, honestly I think this will be like operation paperclip. You’ll see meta code show up from silicon valley to the metaverse. These layoffs should super charge independent attempts at creating an open source metaverse.

        • Mr.Philgood

          Impacted employees will receive 16 weeks of pay plus two additional weeks for every year of service. On top of that, Meta will cover health insurance for six months. And they provide three months of career support with an external vendor, including early access to unpublished job leads.

        • kool

          Ducked with some of the highest paying skill sets and resumes. They’ll be fine. He got too close to the sun and we got our medium of choice established. eggs were broken and omelets were made.

        • sfmike

          We’re all f**ked by the billionaires that are now hoarding most of the wealth in this sad nation. “The top 1% of Americans have about 16 times more wealth than the bottom 50% The wealthiest 1% of Americans controlled about $41.52 trillion in the first quarter, according to Federal Reserve.”

        • Max-Dmg

          Yeah, so even less chance of them fixing years old and new obvious bugs.

    • kool

      In pretty sure he lost more than they made…

  • ViRGiN

    Sometimes you have to fall to the bottom to bounce off it.
    Everyone is laying off people, except for peasant companies like Valve that makes billions and employee about 350 people. Don’t need much workforce when all you do is being a middle man for hosting game files online.

    Nonetheless, this is one of the best ‘goodbye’ packets ever offered to employees. With such CV, all doors are open.
    Best wishes Mark and thanks for all the extremely hard work and making VR a reality, not a fad.

    • Rudl Za Vedno

      Yeah? Tech companies are cutting workforce like there is no tomorrow atm. I have a bad feeling the worst is yet to come. This recession might well be 1929 like or even worse.

  • vancleefmustache

    There’s some serious hardcore Zuckerberg riding going on in this thread. Never thought I would say that in my life but here we are. I love me some VR but, man, I gotta say, you are a weird bunch. Sometimes it really feels like the VR community is the neck beard of gaming.

    • Your Zuckerberg hatred is just as irrational.
      Like I, Virgin & anybody else who’s thinking clearly has said time & time again:
      for all of his faults, and there are many, consumer virtual reality
      would be NOWHERE NEAR what it is now in 2022 if not for him.
      Your needlessly stubborn refusal to accept this truth doesn’t make it any less valid.

      But I understand: you’re looking for that endorphine squirt you get
      when others cheer and pat you on the back online
      for being a contributing member of the “Fuck Zuck!!” club.

      • vancleefmustache

        Neckbeard of neckbeard.

        • shadow9d9

          The irony.

    • shadow9d9

      Anyone who uses the name just outs themselves as a lunatic.

  • Papias

    It will be interesting to see what Apple achieves.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      It will be, but not everything Apple does becomes a hit, Apple TV hasn’t exactly conquered the world by storm, even though it has nice series.

    • shadow9d9

      A $3000 headset and zero game development. Is that interesting?

  • ViRGiN

    DUDE!!!
    Did you watch the latest peemax Connect? I mean pee-frontier?
    Please do watch it fully. Cringe guaranteed at minimum rate of two per minute. This is the company that people who faked their death put their last hope, starting with Crystal lol. You can put pimax in a pimax. Holy crap.

  • XRC

    Sad news (for affected employees) but not surprised; he bet the farm on the metawhatsit.

    The technology just isn’t ready, either body worn or network infrastructure. Mass market doesn’t care, yet, if ever?

    Bold bet he made, kudos for the attempt, but it’s one vision of the future, he’s not the first CEO to take a company down the wrong path?

    Hopefully the ex-employees have a happy landing, at least the severance is generous

  • Max-Dmg

    fb are broke lol.

    • ViRGiN

      more like you are morally bankrupt and victim of 2 decades long steam abuse.
      they are still making billions in profit.
      you even commented on article half a year ago about mark warning shareholders that metaverse may not flourish until 2030s

      • Max-Dmg

        They cant even afford to get staff to fix bugs in all their riddled software. Bet your a virgin in real life too.

        • ViRGiN

          I bet you lost your virginity against your will.

          • Max-Dmg

            Only at first.

          • ViRGiN

            With a fist!?

          • Max-Dmg

            I’d fist your face.

          • Max-Dmg

            My fist in your face.

          • ViRGiN

            Your face in my fist, dude who lost his virginity against his will

          • Max-Dmg

            Sad little keyboard warrior.

          • ViRGiN

            I dictate my speech, you sad little keyboard warrior

        • MOT

          Block him. Hes either a child or a troll.

          • Max-Dmg

            lol its quite funny, constant childish troll rants. Once they get laid they will see the world in a happier perspective.

  • I feel bad for all these people that are being laid off this year in the tech world

    • JakeDunnegan

      16 weeks of base pay? Are you kidding me? I’ve worked in the tech industry for twenty years, and I never received more than two weeks severance. A year on the job, and they’d be getting more a third of a year, paid?

      Everyone goes through layoffs. Very few people get that kind of a cushion.

    • gothicvillas

      shut up about your feeling bad. Look what they have done to META as a whole. They deserve to be sacked and NEVER employed again.

    • Max-Dmg

      I wouldnt mind being laid.

  • Ad

    Woohoo!

    • ViRGiN

      the most retarded take ever, as usually delivered by an absolute valve boy

      • NotHuman

        Blame only your bf mark

    • NotHuman

      Yeap

  • cheese

    Try bringing A one games like half-life , and lower the prices of games like on steam.

  • BananaBreadBoy

    Oof, Reality Labs is definitely gonna be hit by this. Unfortunate.

  • Ookami

    It’s kind of insane watching Meta crumble in just a year. They used to be the sixth most valuable company in the world, but are now worth less than Home Depot. And Mark Zuckerburg seems to have no intention on putting the brakes on the exorbitant amount of money they’re spending on the Metaverse.
    And with every showing of Horizon, I really wonder what’s going on in there. A team of 12 dedicated and passionate developers could outdo them.

    Perhaps we are witnessing an end to an era.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      Well they may have had the sixth highest value on the stock exchange… thier value is something quite different, you might say almost unrelated!
      Bitcoins are essentially worthless, yet, even after losing 3/4 of their “value” people still pretend they are worth $800.000.000.000 .

    • shadow9d9

      Crumble? AHAHAHA! Delusional! They still have more than 3x the amount of vr workers than Apple. Stock price means nothing. Intel cut jobs. Amazon cut jobs. it is the whole sector.

      • Ookami

        Strange that you bring up Apple, since no else was talking about it. But since you made the comparison: Apple’s VR division is only a small part of the company, while Meta is betting literally everything on the Metaverse. Apple incidentally also has twice the employees as Meta as a whole. If Meta’s bet on the Metaverse fails then the whole company will fail with it. If Apple’s VR venture fails, they my lose a lot of money but will still be the juggernaut they are because Apple’s main business is still mobile devices.
        Meta is betting everything. Apple isn’t.

        So will Meta’s bet pay off?
        I don’t think so. With the gaff that is Meta Horizons, which has so many people working on it yet could be easily outdone by a couple dozen highly passionate developers. The whole leg thing is the perfect example of this: first it was “impossible” with current tech to give characters legs, then it was in development, and finally we had the reveal–which turned out to be completely faked, meaning Meta is still fumbling over a simple thing like legs. Compare that to any other VR game: VRChat, any number of single-player games with full body IK. Blade and Sorcery was made by ONE developer and he had no problem implementing legs.
        Yeah, I don’t think Meta’s bet is going to pay off.

        You might be right that stock price means nothing, but the reason behind the falling stock price is far from meaningless: Meta’s revenue has dropped–a lot. Despite that, their spending has only increased–and Zuckerberg plans to continue increasing it.

        Maybe saying that Meta is crumbling is a bit premature, but idk I kinda feel it’s fitting.

  • Cragheart

    I hope Meta understands, that Metaverse is a far away vision, which requires the specs of at least very high-end desktop PCs, not some mobile headsets and changes their whole mistaken strategy. PC VR is what makes sense and needs serious development. Mobile VR is a joke. Quest Pro won’t be sufficient for the Metaverse to be realized, even at $200.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Mobile VR isn’t a joke, it makes it even a simpeler setup. Yeah it’s still somewhat underpowered, but the games that are optimized are great. With PCVR you still have to hope your controllers are supported (luckily I gave both the index controllers and the vive wands), you also need an expensive PC to drive the latest headsets at their native resolution and framerate. AND the advantage of mobile VR is that you can also use the headset for PCVR. No cable crap for me, still even get annoyed by the battery cable running down my back/side from my vive pro wireless module, whished there would be a hotswappable batterypack/headstrap like the boboVR for the Quest and Pico 4. Any new standalone headset should come with a system like that.

  • Ordinary_Failure

    Sincerely, I have read this several times, and I find it to be great!

  • Zantetsu

    I had a DK2 in 2014 and bought a Vive the moment they were available in 2016. I used VR pretty heavily in 2016 – 2018 or so. Upgraded to Vive Pro just to get better graphics for the best VR experience I’ve ever had (Fallout 4 VR), although was so intensely disappointed that they hadn’t fixed the terrible lenses that I went from being pro-HTC to anti-HTC. I bought a Valve Index the moment they were available. My son used VR very extensively from 2018 to 2020 or so, but then he “aged out” of interest in Rec Room. Since then I’ve bought an Oculus Quest and Quest 2 just to try to keep my interest in VR up but I basically have never used either.

    My VR kit has been sitting around collecting dust for years. I still read this site daily because there’s still something in me that hopes that VR will turn a corner, but by this point I’ve just about lost all confidence.

    This weekend I got the hankering to fire up Fallout 4 VR again. It had been long enough since I played it that I felt like I do another playthrough now and enjoy it as mostly a new-ish experience.

    It didn’t work. Fallout 4 VR just fails to start. I tried re-installing it, removing all mods (which honestly I wouldn’t want to play without mods but just to get it working, I tried), upgrading graphics drivers, everything I could think of. Nope. Two hours of frustration and I gave up.

    So I decided to go with SkyrimVR instead, which I have never played through but I’ve played through flat screen Skyrim a few times and honestly doing it again has less appeal because it’s such overtreaded ground for me. But – same problem. It worked up until I had to design my character and then the character view was black, couldn’t see what I was doing. So I went on another 1 hour spree of messing with mods, re-installing the game, everything I could think of. No dice.

    Three hours of frustration. I ended up playing and enjoying one of my old standby favorites, Pinball FX2 VR. That was fun but incredibly frustrating because the Valve Index controller support is nonexistent and the controllers barely work, and only after manually trying tons of button combinations to get a minimal set that let me mostly play the game.

    Valve Index controllers have sucked terribly for me. They hardly work in any of the old games I enjoy. Why there was never an option to just make them work exactly like Vive wands for any game you wanted to use them that way in, I will never understand. Steam VR should have just had a mode that made them look to the game *exactly* like a Vive wand (if you chose that option) so that there were zero incompatibility issues. But nope. Instead there are a plethora of confusing and weird controller settings options available and none seem to ever make the Index controllers work reasonably in any game I play.

    So my summary is, PC VR sucks. I put up with its foibles and shortcomings for years when I was so eager to play VR that I would do anything to make it happen. Now that it’s a much more casual interest, the hours that it takes to get anything to work, is not even close to worth it. Yeah I am sure that with enough screwing around I could get Fallout 4 VR and Skyrim VR to work, even with the Index controllers which will probably take some additional tweaking and reading tons of documentation and picking from one of dozens of overlapping solutions to the problem none of which is probably exactly right.

    Steam VR deserves to die, and PC VR with it, and Valve is the culprit. Their stuff was just too unreliable and quirky. Even when I was fully into VR I remember so many frustrating moments dealing with headsets that suddenly wouldn’t be seen, or controllers that would get lost, or what have you.

    • Foreign Devil

      You say you have a Quest 2 right? Why not just use AirLink and do you PC VR gaming with that? Easiest to set up by far.

      • Zantetsu

        I guess because I paid for the Index FOV and features and I wanted to use it. Also since the software that runs the game is SteamVR even if the game is rendered on the Quest 2 means that if SteamVR can’t start the game, using the quest as the output device doesn’t really help anything.

        Now in terms of the annoyance of the Index controllers in Pinball FX2 VR, then maybe the Quest would have helped because the touch controllers would have presumably worked better. But that wasn’t necessary because I managed after 5 minutes of annoyed fiddling to get the Index controllers workable enough in that game.

      • gothicvillas

        Quest 2 have terrible FOV. Its like wearing binoculars.

    • Tommy

      Your Quest 2 makes a decent PCVR hmd. Almost no tinkering involved. If you want to avoid it completely, I recommend console VE. It just works.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      I think it has more to do with your setup or something, as I never really had such problems you describe.

      • Zantetsu

        Admittedly I’ve let it all bit rot a little in the past few years, but I had problems even back when I was focused on VR. Valve’s stuff is just unreliable. If you don’t believe me, just search. You’ll find lots of people have similar problems.

    • MOT

      I’ve seen a lot of pcvr who have switched to psvr2 for just this reason. I’m an index owner and still love my index but I havent put my psvr2 down since I got it. It is literally plug and play and you are in a game in under a minute. Everything just works perfectly every time. There are no loading times on games either. It’s a seriously impressive experience.

      • Zantetsu

        How are the lenses? I only used the original PSVR a few times but if I recall the lenses were real glass lenses and as a result were absolutely outstanding. Completely clear vision edge to edge, unlike the terrible lenses in the Vive and Index where so much of the view is blurry. Also glass lenses have so much more vibrant colors. My DK2 had better color and clarity than anything I have owned since then :( (but of course, massively reduced FOV, that’s the trade-off).

        • MOT

          The lenses arent as good as the original unfortunately. They went for fresnel, probably to keep the cost down. There are slight godrays but not really bad ones like the first generation pcvr headsets as Sony have built their own custom fresnel lenses. Sweet spot is small but not a problem once you get it dialed in. The image is pretty sharp but has a slightly soft look to it. Where the headset really excels is colour and contrast with the hdr oled. The blacks are pitch black and the colours are much more lifelike so every thing is more realistic, especially sunlight. The controllers are outstanding. The haptics are excellent and the adaptive triggers are a game changer. They really are next level for VR and it felt strange going back to other controller triggers after using the psvr2 triggers.

  • Tommy

    This is unfortunate for those being laid off. I can’t say I’m surprised by it though. The writing has been on the wall with Zuck’s obsession with his Metaverse.
    I miss the old Oculus days where they focused more on games than improving lower tech to try and catch up to tech they already had. Yes, there are plenty of small improvements but they took game design back quite a bit. Almost every game I bought a Meta headset for has been either canceled or pushed to a newer headset that I don’t even plan on buying. In other words, I feel duped.
    I keep hearing they’ve done more for VR than anyone else, but, have they really?
    Sure, they sold a lot of cheaper costing headsets but how many of those sales equate to people still using them? I think they said 10%? That sounds more like disappointment and buyer’s remorse than a thriving business model.
    I like my Quest for PCVR because I can play wirelessly and I still play a few native games like Walkabout and Pistol Whip on Quest, but majority of my gaming is on PCVR and PSVR2. I go where I can play the best games. Isn’t that what we buy a VR headset for in the first place?
    Anyways, I feel for the people laid off and hope they find another company that will utilize their love and/or dedication to VR.

    • MOT

      Agreed. I’ve got an Index and also got the psvr2 at launch. I’m happy knowing that I’ve got access to all high end VR content going forward. I wish more people from the pcvr community would realise just how good the psvr2 is.

      • Tommy

        I love them both and wish Sony would allow mods. That will always keep me from going full console VR.

        • MOT

          Agreed. I just want great VR games and I will buy the headset that provides me with them. Psvr2 has got off to a good start.

  • Rudl Za Vedno

    Wrong, Zuck’s vision of VR as a datamining milking ground is dying. VR/AR is here to stay. IF not now then in 5 or 10 year’s time when tech advances enough.

    • ViRGiN

      Muh steamvr

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Oh comeon, why rehashing an old article, this just happens way too much.

  • Chris

    Wonder how many more media releases will contain Zuck’s standard phrase ‘I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that’ before the company realizes that he isn’t the person that should be leading Meta. His blind belief in his own vision will bring Meta to it’s knees, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

  • Lucidfeuer

    Good, now I hope the whole of Meta dies and the internet may, I say may, be valuable and productive again. I’m sad that journalists (with the huge courage they’re known to have…) didn’t release the Facebook papers that some inside investigators and whistleblowers went through the trouble of collecting.

    They are one of the scummiest, worst consumer companies in the world and one can even wonder if they destroyed more value than they created overall (non-withstanding the political and social danger it was).

    Zuckerberg is an empty shell of a sociopath, not the hedge fund kind but the inhumane engineer kind who doesn’t not have single drop of soul and creativity in him, which doesn’t really matter since he’s no really responsible for anything at Meta beside being a face.

    OF COURSE those people wouldn’t herald, let alone invent this new, extremely sophisticated and complex domain and set of devices/softwares that VR is, OF COURSE. It just took longer than expected because it turns out that in an empty sea of other even more mediocre actors, they weren’t so bad at marketing and some of the designs.

    • Newlot

      “Zuck not responsible for anything besides being a face” what are you talking about? Zuck owns majorita voting shares, he does whatever he wants. He is the one pushing the metaverse, he takes all the major decisions.

  • MOT

    Not for me and the guys I was racing online yesterday in GT7.

    We had a fantastic time. Brilliant experience. Sony are making an effort to bring AAA games to VR. People should support them if its something they want to see continue in future.

    I’ve also got an index by the way which I also love, but the psvr2 is a great piece of kit and credit to Sony for bringing high end VR to the masses at a reasonable price.

    I say to anybody who can afford it, pick up a ps5 and psvr2. If you’ve already got a pcvr set up and add a psvr2 you will have access to all VR content going forward.

    • NotHuman

      Man stfu Sony boy

      • MOT

        Grow up. Im not a ‘Sony’ boy I own an Index and a quest 2. I’ve had multiple headsets over the years.

  • Cheeese

    Games need to be number 1 priority , same old games displayed, not to mention major confusion of meta verse talking over oculus, had so many glitches,put out games like half life , built from ground up, and are pure quality with dlc ,and mods ,you will never lose money. Feel bad for all the people who have put in quality effort that are getting laid off

  • Cheese

    Can someone tell me WHY,when i view anything from meta verse site the image goes mobile regardless if i use my ipad, it should have a fix or some orientation button on area to reconfigure , also to sign is so absurd in road to vr , always have to sign as a guest re captcha never works properly, how about take that garbage robot shit off

  • Mat Pawluczuk

    Meta also gave up on NFTs and will remove them from Facebook and Instagram just one year after proclaiming Web3 to be the next big thing.
    Not saying NFTs were great, but it just shows how Meta is drifting aimlessly. Now AI is all the rage so they’re banking on AI.

  • Max-Dmg

    Can they leave 1 person to work on the Quest 2? It is currently a notification simulator. I wish tech people were in charge, or people with software experience. Maybe watch a video on UX basics. I wonder if they got rid of any testers, if they had any in the first place. So many obvious bugs lol.
    And rememer, every time you get a quest 2 notification, god kills a kitten.