In a recent blog post about the end of MeetinVR, I wrote:
Facebook (which went to all the trouble and expense of rebranding itself as Meta during this ridiculous hype cycle) acquired Oculus and invested literally hundreds of millions of dollars into building its business Metaverse platform. We couldn’t even get employees to use it. (Not to mention others)…
I predict that we will see a “metaverse winter,” much like the “AI winters” before it, where the initial promise and hype around the technology is met with what the Gartner Group politely calls “the trough of disillusionment.” And I predict that we will see the following: many There will likely be more closure announcements like this throughout 2026.
well? Once again, we’re late to report that Meta has finally discontinued its Horizons Workrooms product, an enterprise social VR platform. According to The road to VR Horizon Workroom’s last day was February 16, 2026, according to a news report by Scott Hayden.
This is not surprising. As I said above, it seems like no one uses Workrooms. I wrote about the open beta launch of Workrooms in August 2021, when Facebook Horizon (as it was called at the time) was still in private, invitation-only beta. One cool feature is that keyboard tracking allows you to bring your physical keyboard into the virtual space (but this only works on certain keyboard models). A month later they announced a collaboration with Zoom, but I don’t know where that went.
In October 2022, rumors arose when an internal memo was leaked showing that even Meta employees were avoiding using Workrooms. Not long after that, The Verge published a brutally critical review of Workrooms. The product was buggy, the avatars were cartoonish, and the cost of entry seemed too high for a given use case compared to simpler solutions like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Meta finally decided to take the dog out and shoot this year. I’m surprised it lasted that long. Scott Hayden reported:
For existing users, Meta hasn’t announced a direct replacement for Workrooms. The company suggests users look into third-party apps such as: Arthur, Microsoft Teams Immersive and Zoom workplace.
Oh, and according to Scott’s article, Meta has also put the project on hold and laid off employees in its Reality Labs division. So it looks like our metaverse winter is in full swing.
But keep in mind that winter is only one of the four seasons. And winter has its own special beauty. Even though it may seem like nothing much is happening beneath the ice and snow.
Yes, we’ll probably see more platforms like Workrooms shut down and more companies go out of business (not just Meta, of course, but also smaller ones). But those of us who have already been active in the metaverse for many years are not going anywhere during these poor and cold times. We found our people and community everywhere, whether in flat virtual worlds like Second Life or in gatherings on VRChat. We move from world to world as our needs dictate.
Yes, the current market difficulties will still affect us all in one way or another. We can expect moments of panic and chaos (e.g. when Ready Player Me was sold to Netflix and thousands of developers had to scramble to replace the avatar system). But we’ll hunker down, use the downtime productively, and wait for next season to come.
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