Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has announced that it will no longer allow creators using its Horizon Worlds social VR playscape to make dedicated events. The company made the announcement as part of the platform’s v109 update notes on Tuesday. This is a surprising shutdown of a feature that some creators hoped would someday see improvements. The change to events will make things even more challenging for creators who are investing in Meta’s metaverse vision.
Meta is positioning the change as the shutdown of a feature that doesn’t meet its standards. « As we’ve refocused our development in Worlds toward improving the overall quality of the platform, we’ve taken time to also revisit some legacy features that aren’t quite living up to our renewed quality standards, » Meta wrote in its v109 update notes. « As part of this effort, we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue the event creation tool in Worlds. »
The change poses a problem for the club’s regularly-scheduled shows, and the way Meta gave more prominence to high-profile events featuring big name stars like Carrie Underwood. Existing events that are scheduled to take place after Tuesday can still happen, and some « official events » (presumably Meta-backed ones) will still be promoted, but users can’t make new ones. It is too early for Meta to say what the long term future holds for creator events in Worlds, but when they have more to share, their creators will be the first to know.
Keywords: Meta, Horizon Worlds, social VR, playscape, events, shutdown, creators, metaverse, Facebook.