Essential Guide: Meta Is Closing 3 Vr Studios And Laying Off Roughly 10% Of Reality...

Armature Studios, Sanzaru Games, and Twisted Pixel are done for.

Meta chief technology officer Andrew "Boz" Bosworth said early in 2025 that the metaverse could be a "legendary misadventure" if the company's Reality Labs division didn't turn things around that year in a big way. Well, here we are in 2026, and it looks like the mission was not accomplished: Bloomberg says Meta is beginning layoffs of more than 1,000 Reality Labs employees and closing three development studios as it shifts attention from VR and the metaverse to its next big idea, AI wearables and phone features.

An internal memo viewed by Bloomberg said roughly 10% of the Reality Labs workforce will be let go in an effort to make the division "more sustainable." A Meta representative said the cuts represent part of a previously announced effort to shift investment "from metaverse toward wearables," adding, "We plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year."

"Starting today, VR will operate as a leaner, flatter organization with a more focused road map to maximize long-term sustainability," Bosworth wrote in the memo.

Reality Labs has lost a staggering amount of money over the past several years—roughly $50 billion across 2020-2024, a revenue black hole that's only grown wider since—without showing any evidence of an ability to produce a popular, actual useful mainstream product. Which isn't to say that the metaverse didn't give us anything memorable, just that it was, well, this:

Meta will continue to work on the metaverse, according to the report, but with a focus on mobile devices rather than "fully immersive VR headsets" that were initially expected to be at the core of the experience. VR headset development will also continue, but at a reduced pace.

Meta will also close three VR development studios as part of the cuts: Resident Evil 4 VR developer Armature Studios, Asgard's Wrath maker Sanzaru Games, and probably the best known of the bunch, Defector developer Twisted Pixel, whose last release was Deadpool VR in 2025.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sim

Source: PC Gamer