Several of Meta’s VR studios have been affected by the company’s metaverse-focused layoffs. The company has shuttered three of its VR studios, including Armature, Sanzaru and Twisted Pixel. VR fitness app Supernatural will no longer be updated with fresh content.
Employees at Twisted Pixel, which released Marvel’s Deadpool VR in November, and Sanzaru, known for Asgard’s Wrath, posted on social media about the closures. Bloomberg reported that Armature, which brought Resident Evil 4 to Quest back in 2021 has also closed and that the popular VR fitness app Supernatural will no longer be updated with fresh content, though the current version will continue to be supported.
A spokesperson for Meta confirmed the closures. “We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Tech Reader. “This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year.”
The cuts raise questions about Meta’s commitment to supporting a VR ecosystem it has invested heavily in. The company hasn’t announced any new VR headsets since the Quest 3S in 2024, and last month it “paused” planned Horizon OS headsets from Asus and Lenovo. Now, it’s also pulling back on in-house game development too.
Meta is claiming, internally at least, that it remains committed to supporting the industry. “These changes do not mean we are moving away from video games,” Oculus Studios director Tamara Sciamanna wrote in the memo reported by Bloomberg. “With this change we are shifting our investment to focus on our third-party developers and partners to ensure long-term sustainability.”
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