Today, Meta announced that it is launching a new $50 million Creator Fund alongside the early access release of the Meta Horizon Worlds desktop editor. The fund aims to reward creators with cash prizes and a way to earn an income through Meta’s Roblox-like game, including a new expansion to mobile that launched last Fall in the Meta Horizon app on iOS and Android.
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In his weekly column, Android Central Senior Content Producer Nick Sutrich delves into all things VR, from new hardware to new games, upcoming technologies, and so much more.
Meta says the new fund is designed to appeal to a growing audience of players who prefer free-to-play content, similar to audiences on other mobile platforms. Meta’s blog post on the announcement says the new move is aimed to grow these mobile, non-VR audiences by reaching “a lot of new people who don’t yet own a Quest headset and ultimately grow the pie for everyone.”
The logic, Meta dictates, is that people who enjoy Horizon Worlds will be more inclined to purchase a Meta Quest headset to try the experiences in VR. But Meta couldn’t be more wrong here, and while I ultimately think hybrid experiences like this — that means VR and non-VR players can game with each other — are the future of gaming as a whole, Meta’s focus on Horizon Worlds is simply unhealthy for everyone.
Meta’s CTO recently said that 2025 would be the make-or-break year for Horizon Worlds, so while it’s not surprising to see the company make a last-ditch effort to catalyze better development for Horizon Worlds, it’s beyond frustrating to see the company continue to push the Roblox-like platform over the best Meta Quest games at the expense of existing VR developers.
Shifted focus means the death of something
The first thing you see when opening the required Meta Quest companion app isn’t the best games on the platform. It’s janky free-to-play garbage that’s an instant turn-off to anyone who isn’t 8 years old, and that’s a huge problem.
Once upon a time, I fully believed that Meta Horizon Worlds could co-exist with more premium experiences like Batman Arkham Shadow. Other platforms seem to have no problem juggling the balance between offering free-to-play and premium experiences to users who prefer one over the other, but Meta has shown that it’s not very good at multitasking.
Instead, a quick visit to the Meta Horizon app on your phone always shows a ton of Horizon Worlds content that you may or may not want. The premium app store can be found by clicking a tiny icon on the top left of the app, and promotional content for these kinds of experiences has substantially waned over the past six months.
This huge shift in focus for Meta has had a profound impact on the VR industry, as a whole. Instead of developers seeing record game sales after the launch of a new headset, the Meta Quest 3S launch was decidedly different. Many VR developers saw flat or even lower sales throughout the Holiday 2024 period when compared to 2023, and the results haven’t been pretty.
Meta’s choice to promote Horizon Worlds content over paid apps from developers is causing unnecessary and irreparable harm to the VR market as a whole.
Lots of video game developers have closed their doors or made substantial layoffs this year. While this unfortunate reality isn’t relegated just to the VR market, it hurts more in VR because there aren’t as many bigger developers as on traditional consoles or PC. Just in the last month alone, we’ve seen major layoffs at Toast Interactive, Crytek, Fast Travel Games, Soul Assembly, and even the app market SideQuest.
Wider industry trends are somewhat to blame for these problems, but Meta’s choice to promote Horizon Worlds content over paid apps from developers is causing unnecessary and irreparable harm to the VR market as a whole.
I had already planned to write this post before I found out about Meta’s new creator program, and its existence only further solidifies my opinion here. The first thing you see when opening the required Meta Quest companion app isn’t the best games on the platform. It’s janky free-to-play garbage that’s an instant turn-off to anyone who isn’t 8 years old, and that’s a huge problem.
Meta, it’s time to give up the ghost. Horizon Worlds isn’t going to be The Oasis from Ready Player One. It’s not even going to be Rec Room or VR Chat, two very successful VR “metaverse-style” experiences that existed far before Horizon Worlds was ever a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye.
Mr. Zuckerberg, if you’re reading this, it’s OK to accept Horizon Worlds as a “failure” to capitalize early enough on a growing trend. So instead of tanking the successful Quest ecosystem and its development community, focus on the best experiences available on the platform and start promoting those, instead.
With the VP of VR on the way out at the end of the month, this is the perfect time for his replacement to focus on the real metaverse of apps and games that Quest players know and love. Get back to that early 2024 time frame when developers were seeing huge growth and success in their titles with the swath of new players. The Quest 3S just broke sales records, and that should translate into game sales. This fixation on Horizon Worlds could kill off the VR ecosystem you’ve spent years building up and no one wants that.