Meta Platforms’ shift away from positioning itself primarily as a “metaverse” company towards building AI-powered wearables and mobile phone features has led to more than 1,000 job cuts in its Reality Labs division. According to Bloomberg, the reductions are expected to affect around 10 per cent of employees within the group, which employs roughly 15,000 people.
The cuts include the closure of several virtual reality gaming studios. Among the casualties is Twisted Pixel Games, the developer behind Marvel’s Deadpool VR. In a LinkedIn post, Andy Gentile, a former level designer at Twisted Pixel, wrote: “I’ve just been laid off. It appears the entire Twisted Pixel Games studio has been shut down, along with Sanzaru and Armature too.”
Sanzaru Games, the studio responsible for the Asgard’s Wrath franchise, also appears to have been closed. Ray West, a former senior level designer at Sanzaru, said in a LinkedIn post: “As many will hear soon, several Meta game studios were closed today, including Sanzaru.”
Armature Studio, which worked on the Resident Evil 4 VR port, is reportedly also affected. Meanwhile, the team behind the VR fitness app Supernatural will no longer develop new content or features, although the “existing product” will continue to be supported, Bloomberg reports.
Meta will continue to operate five other content and gaming studios, including Beat Games, BigBox, Camouflaj, Glassworks and OURO.
The reductions form part of a broader effort by Meta to refocus on mobile devices. The company is also planning to scale back its virtual reality investments in order to make the business “more sustainable”, chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth wrote in a memo.
“We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from the metaverse towards wearables,” a company spokesperson said. “This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year.”
Reality Labs has been responsible for developing advanced products such as VR headsets and AI-powered glasses. However, the division has reportedly lost more than $70 billion since the start of 2021.
At the same time, Meta is increasing its focus on artificial intelligence. EssilorLuxottica SA is reportedly looking to expand production capacity for AI-powered smart glasses by the end of this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg renamed the company from Facebook to Meta in 2021. While the company says it will continue to develop the metaverse, its emphasis is increasingly shifting towards mobile phones rather than VR headsets.
