Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Is A FLOP As Users Complain: ‘It’s Lonely’
Just under a year since Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook Meta, internal documents have revealed that his Metaverse virtual reality universe is struggling to achieve its goals.
That’s according to documents seen by the Wall Street Journal. The company planned to reach 500,000 users of its virtual reality platform, Horizon Worlds, by the end of 2022. The number at the time of writing is less than 200,000, still well below the revised target of 280,000 by the end of 2022.
The documents also reveal that the majority of those 200,000 users do not return once they enter the system, with many complaining that most areas have no other users.
They’ve also complained about avatars eerily floating around with no legs – a problem Meta says it will fix in the coming months.
Since the spring of 2022, the number of Horizon Worlds users has been decreasing.
Less than ten percent of the worlds in the Metaverse receive more than 50 visitors and the majority of these worlds receive zero visitors.
A new report from the Wall Street Journal says Meta’s Metaverse is more than 300,000 users short of its year-end target
At an event last Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg promised avatars would get legs soon
Among the many complaints users have had include unrealistic avatars, sexually aggressive behavior, and general bugs throughout the system. They’ve also complained about abandoned worlds, like the restaurant pictured above
The company’s 2021 rebrand was motivated in part by founder Mark Zuckerberg’s desire to take the company beyond social media.
Horizon should be a community where users can access interactive experiences. The Journal report notes, “There are rarely girls at the Hot Girl Summer Rooftop Pool Party, and in Murder Village there is often no one to kill.”
As the document discusses how to drive users into communities where they can interact, read: “An empty world is a sad world.”
In some cases, female users complained of sexually aggressive behavior from male users.
Other complaints that researchers within Meta found among users were that people’s avatars don’t look real and many “have no legs.”
At Meta’s annual Connect conference on Tuesday, Zuckerberg said avatars would soon be getting legs, and demonstrated his own virtual pair by jumping up and down.
But Meta has since admitted that the demo “contained animations created from motion capture.”
Motion capture involves the use of sensors to capture a person’s movements in real life and translate them into computer-animated images.
The legs that Zuckerberg’s avatar showed in the video demo may therefore be more lifelike than legs in the metaverse.
In September, Horizon Worlds was quietly put on lockdown with new features blocked until the bugs could be fixed by the company’s developers.
That shutdown was first reported by The Verge, who quoted Metaverse vice president Vishal Shaw as saying that bugs “made it too hard for our community to enjoy the magic of Horizon.”
He further complained about the lack of Meta employees using their products, saying, “The simple truth is, if we don’t love it, how can we expect our users to love it?”
A user quoted by the Journal, Carlos Silva, a 41-year-old IT executive, said he joined Metaverse in the midst of the pandemic.
When he got to the platform, he found that no one else was with him. Silva said, “I was like, you know, this is the whole reason I bought this thing. So I’m going to figure this out, how to find where to go and how to meet people.’
Since his first experience, Silva says he now gives tours of the platform to help new users avoid his negative first impressions.
A recent report from the tech site Futurism found that Decentraland, a $1.2 billion project on Horizon Worlds, had only 38 active users over a 24-hour period.
Meta’s stock fell 4.3 percent Tuesday shortly after the company announced its new $1,499 Quest Pro virtual reality headset, which it advertised as a “gamechanger” for building its metaverse.
Meta gave the first look at its new Quest Pro virtual reality headset that the company said is a game changer for its metaverse
Described as a productivity device aimed at designers, architects and other creative professionals, the virtual reality headset was unveiled at the Connect event, which was held via live stream.
The device is 40 percent thinner than the Quest 2 thanks to new pancake lenses that also deliver 75 percent more contrast and new self-tracking controllers that “work like an extension of your hand.”
Pre-orders open today and Quest Pro will be available on October 25. Saturday’s Wall Street Journal report said most Quest headsets are out of use for about six months after being purchased.
Zuckerberg has made several major announcements for his new virtual reality venture, not detailing how the company plans to fix its “broken” metaverse plagued by bugs, harassment and privacy issues that hinder its favor with the public.
The issues include reports of women being “virtually raped,” consumers believe hackers will steal their virtual identities, and most people don’t understand what the metaverse actually is.
So far this year, the company formerly known as Facebook has seen its shares fall by more than 60 percent. In terms of market value, the company has lost more than $700 billion.
The company’s 2021 rebrand was motivated in part by founder Mark Zuckerberg’s desire to take the company beyond social media.
In defense of the metaverse as a whole, the director of VRdirect told the Journal, “We’re trying to land on the moon and people are complaining that the coffee machine isn’t working.”