Nuked Hello, my fellow tech enthusiasts! It’s your favorite funny guy Nuked, here to talk about the latest update from Meta. Unfortunately, it’s not good news for creators using Horizon Worlds social VR playscape. Meta has announced that it will no longer allow creators to make dedicated events, which is a surprising shutdown of a feature that some creators hoped would someday see improvements.
In March, I wrote about the VR protest organized by Horizon Worlds creators who run an in-VR comedy club called the Unknown Theater. They were protesting Meta’s treatment of events on the platform, which made community-organized events much more challenging to find. This posed a problem for the club’s regularly-scheduled shows, and the way Meta gave more prominence to high-profile events featuring big name stars like Carrie Underwood.
As of Tuesday’s v109 update notes, creators can no longer make events. Existing events that are scheduled to take place after Tuesday can still happen, and some “official events” (presumably Meta-backed ones) will still be promoted, but users can’t make new ones. Meta is positioning the change as the shutdown of a feature that doesn’t meet its standards.
The change to events will make things even more challenging for creators who are investing in Meta’s metaverse vision. That road is already hard enough, given you can only use Horizon Worlds with Meta’s Quest VR headsets (Meta is working on web and mobile versions, but they’re not here yet) and the platform’s struggles to retain the relatively few users it has.
But despite these challenges, Meta is still committed to the metaverse. Though CEO Mark Zuckerberg has proclaimed 2023 to be the “year of efficiency,” the company said in April that it expects operating losses for its Reality Labs division to increase year over year in 2023.
So, what does this mean for creators using Horizon Worlds? Well, it’s going to be tough. Even the Unknown Theater is broadening its horizons by expanding into Flipside Studio, a platform that lets creators livestream VR shows. But as an embodied and synchronous space, Meta still envisions Worlds as a place where people can come together to have amazing experiences with their communities.
While the discontinuation of the event creation tool is a blow for creators, Meta has said that it’s too early to say what the long-term future holds for creator events in Worlds. They will continue to test and learn from official events, which may help to inform what the future holds for events more broadly.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more updates from the world of tech!
