Your justification for starting as a salmon man in a barrel is that you are trying to get up the waterfall. This is, of course, something actual salmon do. So it follows from developer Valem Studio that it is something a salmon man in VR should do too.

Salmon Man blends genuine fun and desire to keep going with the gut-wrenching pain of a tiny mistake ruthlessly chopping away at swathes of progress in a helpless instant. Paddle locomotion, it seems, has a frustrating charm almost tailored for the viral Internet landscape of modern gaming. Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy took over the gaming zeitgeist from its release in late 2017 on Steam and its inspirations here aren't subtle. You can play the same basic style of game in your browser right now, or take a look at what this idea is like in the trailer below.

As you’re not walking around each level yourself, you traverse by way of boat paddle, using it to push yourself from the ground and latch yourself from place to place across increasingly death-defying obstacles.

Far from the first game to take this style of game to the format, Salmon Man finds a thematic way to justify its concept and embed it into the core gameplay loop of this rage-inducing platformer. With the minimal introduction of simply being the titular Salmon Man in a barrel, you’re dropped into the beginning and left to your own devices to get through the perilous journey ahead. That's a rough way to start what is a challenging game and not very accessible.

What gives Salmon Man additional depth and difficulty is the jump to 3D for this genre. It creates a new layer of depth to the formula as you aren’t solely trying to use momentum and physics to get to the next platform, you instead push yourself off side walls and use the full space to get that extra bit of distance. It increases the flair and excitement of each bit of progress, but it makes things somehow more challenging, never mind the steep learning curve for these controls. As you physically move a full rod through your hands in order to grasp onto platforms at your side, behind or in front, lightning-fast reactions are necessary to get by even some of the earlier obstacles, while later ones pose even more of a threat.

It’s rewarding to make it through to a new section, especially knowing there’s always a risk of losing more than a little bit of progress if you hit the water as you helplessly flow with the current. Yet that risk also brings with it a degree of frustration that steps beyond the awkward, challenging charm one would expect from these games. Even after clearing the game the first time and facing numerous setbacks, I never found myself fully accustomed to the shape of the paddle that serves as your way of movement and projection through the environment. It never impeded the game to the point of making me want to quit, but there were occasions where the punishing loss of progress didn’t feel like my fault, or times where it sometimes seemed more useful to wave my arms aimlessly and hope for the best rather than logically try the correct method and hope I could execute it.

I also found the lack of any external narration, dialogue or secondary recognition of your progress to be a notable absence. This is a developer choice and far from necessary, sure, but one that can make the journey feel a little lonely and lacking a bit of character and charm. Beyond a few tinges of music in themed areas (pirate music near the wrecked ship, for example), I found myself even hoping I could hear one of those dreaded, all-too-common sarcastic self-quips from a player character cracking awkward jokes, just to break the silence.

If you do clear the game, a lava difficulty replaces water with lava ensuring a forced restart for failure. That wasn't for me. With the noted lack of comfort to the controls, I can only imagine any mistake would be exacerbated when attempting the latter areas in particular in this mode. I experimented with some early sequences and the first death left me satisfied with the fact I did, at least, clear it once in the normal way.

That being said, even if, like me, a lava-infused playthrough isn’t your speed, there’s still plenty to keep you coming back beyond the initial challenge. Standard route through the game seems a bit too simple? Why not see if you can jump off the main path to more off-beat areas to find an array of hidden rubber ducks! The initial clear isn’t enough? There are achievements with in-game rewards and, if you want to brag, there’s a leaderboard for time trials where you can compete with other players for the best time. You can lose 45 minutes or an hour trying to make progress without even realizing, or keep retrying to get the best time possible. Hidden under the surface is a surprising amount of stuff to get to, but it's not perfect.

Salmon Man - The Final Verdict

Salmon Man is a worthwhile use of your time if you’re in the market for this sort of game. It’s somewhat ironic to say this as a games reviewer, but more than most titles, you can tell at a glance whether this is for you. Did you enjoy Getting Over It? Can you handle a turbulent VR experience? Do you want to combine those ideas? This is for you. If not, perhaps it’s ok to give this game a miss. If you do give it a go though, there’s a good degree of value and fun to be had here.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.

CD PROJEKT RED executive Jan Rosner posted on X that the Luke Ross Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod could return as a free release.

After being issued a notice to take down a Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod, the mod on the Luke Ross Patreon was removed and Ross made an announcement that was shared widely. Rosner, a CD PROJEKT RED executive, confirmed that they had issued a strike because it was infringing on their Fan Content Guidelines, which prohibit "monetization" of their work. In other words, according to the developer of Cyberpunk 2077, the critical issue here is that Ross placed the mod behind a subscription paywall.

“We’d be happy to see it return as a free release," Rosner wrote, noting The Witcher 3 publisher is a huge fan of mods.

“I'm sorry, but I don't believe you are within your rights in demanding that my software needs to be free," Ross replied. "That said, I'm all for finding a win-win solution that makes it possible for your fans to keep enjoying Night City from the inside, in VR.”

Other VR mods from Ross previously released include Doom Eternal, Ghost of Tsushima, Elden Ring, and more. Flat2VR, meanwhile, known for porting flatscreen games to virtual reality, made a passionate plea to CD PROJEKT RED to officially port Cyberpunk 2077 to VR, calling it “a dream game to port.”

Devs United Games said Real VR Fishing sold one million copies across all platforms since its launch in September 2019.

Devs United Games CEO Mark Choi took to X to announce that Real VR Fishing reached one million sales across all platforms. Available on Quest, Steam, Pico, and Galaxy XR, the title sees regular post-launch support, including new events, features, and DLC.

Choi mentioned that a new mastery-based system called Fly Fishing is on the way as well as an expanded campaign with other features requested by the community to add more depth. New leagues and tournaments to increase the game’s longevity are also planned.

Drip-feeding content since release, developers added new maps recreating parts of Mexico, Japan, the United States and Europe. Most recently, the title made its way to Samsung Galaxy XR with hand tracking support late last year, fully supporting cross-play in the latest version of the game. On Apple Vision Pro, the developers explored hand tracking technology on the device with Fishing Haven, but it lacked most of the features of Real VR Fishing that make the game such a standout.

We'll be looking to test out updates to Real VR Fishing in the year ahead and to see what else Devs United Games has in store. Real VR Fishing is out now for Quest, Steam, Pico, and Galaxy XR.

After a launch on December 4, Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow’s developers continue updating with changes to the shadowy adventure.

Out now on all major platforms available, Patch 3.0 in Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow addresses issues raised by the community while improving other aspects of the experience. Developer Maze Theory and publisher Vertigo Games note that the latest changes are built on the foundations of the first patch, released just a week after the game’s release. Graphical improvements aim to balance lighting in the dark environment alongside reduced crashes and bugs.

In Patch 3.0 the game also adds formal support for HTC Vive and Valve Index headsets on the SteamVR version. One of the more immersive mechanics within Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow was the choice to have players’ microphones pick up their sounds, making for unique interactions when luring NPCs from the shadows to their demise. Now players can set the specific mic input source from the options menu.

Our review mentioned “Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow may be a bit modest and rough around the edges, but it's also impressive in the right ways,” and we gave it 4 out of 5 stars. Please share in the comments if you've given the new updates a try.

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow is out now for PlayStation VR 2, Quest, and Steam.

Guardians Frontline released a major update on all platforms offering new tools for players to create their own campaigns.

Almost three years after its release Guardians Frontline recently launched its ninth update, focusing on player-built campaigns. Developer VirtualAge working with Fast Travel Games said the goal is to allow its community to create their own adventures in this core system in a beta state.

Devs say they are open to suggestions with the new tools letting map makers create custom campaigns and even giving the ability to place narrative texts and custom lines for more personalized experiences. The community-focused update also adds a new map reporting system to address any content that does not adhere to their guidelines.

The level editor makes the process of tying them up to full-blown campaigns all the more appealing, and the developer encouraged players to share their campaign creations on the Discord with fellow fans. Other than general bug fixes, the sizable patch also includes the implementation of trophies, a new mission system to guide new players through the main and daily campaigns, and more cosmetic skins to support the studio.

The first-person bug shooter with tinges of Halo, Starcraft, and Helldivers 2 was a hit with UploadVR in our initial review, with "engaging multiplayer modes and the potential for a swathe of community-generated content, Guardians Frontline is easy to recommend."

An upcoming sequel called Guardians Planetfall is planned to release in 2026. Guardians Frontline is out now for Quest and Steam.

Billed as a large-scale VR sci-fi action game inspired by Starship Troopers, a title called Hivefall is available in Early Access through the Patreon of Memoreum’s director.

Access is granted via a Patreon page and SideQuest from Wim Buytaert, the director of Memoreum. Hivefall is the latest creation from the director focused around the concept of base defense. Each mission lets players prepare before a massive assault of alien bugs tears down their walls, culminating in a bombastic final wave with large bosses.

This early build is specifically made with the Quest 3 in mind, with a downloadable file sent to paying subscribers on Google Drive and installable by sideloading through the SideQuest app. The developer mentioned that the sci-fi action shooter is “inspired by everything I always wanted from Starship Troopers in VR.”

As the commander of an Earth-based military corporation, your terraforming efforts to colonize new planets end up waking up an alien organism hellbent on infecting other solar systems. The current build provides access to the first three missions of Hivefall and a fully functional progression tier system with skins. The solo developer aims to update the project every month with new content.

After spending some time with this early build and going through the hassle of setting up SideQuest and uploading the files needed to work correctly, we’ll be curious to see how many people are willing to go through the sideloading process. Hivefall’s dev is basically investigating that very prospect with his offering. Distributing work in VR via Patreon is not unheard of, with Davigo's flat PC vs. VR game running a campaign. I can confirm the game runs in an early alpha state on Quest 3, but a considerable number of the planned pieces are still works in progress or missing. The bugs are still looking pretty pixelated to my eyes in the first build distributed for the game.

“This project may realistically be my final venture in the VR industry if it does not become financially sustainable. That said, VR remains my true passion and the space where I most want to create and innovate,” the developer wrote over email. “This project represents not only a game, but years of experience, dedication, and belief in immersive technology.”

Last year’s survival horror Memoreum from the dev received praise for its ambitious goals while falling short of expectations in other areas, as we said in our review, “there's going to be someone out there who will love Memoreum, even with its rough spots, and they'll have a sizable experience to dig into.”

Regular episodic campaigns and the possibility of an online co-op mode may be in the cards for the game depending on the support it receives.

Hivefall is available now for Quest 3 via Patreon.

Palmer Luckey thinks Meta closing its VR game studios is "a good thing for the long-term health of the industry", and that the narrative of it "abandoning" VR is "obviously false".

If you somehow missed it: last week Meta shut down three of its acquired studios – Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard's Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR) – and conducted significant layoffs at a fourth: Camouflaj (Batman: Arkham Shadow).

The closures are part of Meta's wider strategy of, in its own words, "shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables", and the layoffs have affected around 10% of Meta's Reality Labs division, around 1500 people.

Meta Closes Deadpool VR, Asgard’s Wrath & Resident Evil 4 VR Studios

Meta has shut down Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR), UploadVR can confirm.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

This strategy shift has led some in the industry to speculate that Meta is abandoning VR entirely. But Oculus founder Palmer Luckey doesn't agree.

In a post on X, Luckey argued that last week's events were "not a disaster", pointing out that Meta still employs more people working on VR than any other company "by about an order of magnitude".

Further, Luckey explains that "crowding out the rest of the entire ecosystem" by forcing third-party developers to compete with blockbusters like Batman and Deadpool games that cost more to make than they would ever return "doesn't make sense", suggesting that the end of this strategy will be "a good thing for the long-term health of the industry".

He further notes that while some of these titles are received well, others fail, revealing that Rock Band VR, a 2017 Oculus Rift exclusive, sold just 700 copies.

Here's Palmer Luckey's full statement:

"I have an opinion on the Meta layoffs that is contrary with most of the VR industry and much of the media, but strongly held.

This is not a disaster. They still employ the largest team working on VR by about an order of magnitude. Nobody else is even close. The "Meta is abandoning VR" narrative is obviously false, 10% layoffs is basically six months of normal churn concentrated into 60 days, strictly numbers wise.

The majority of the 1,500 jobs cut in Reality Labs (out of 15,000) were roles working on first-party content, internally developed games that competed directly with third party developers. I think this is a good decision, and I thought the same back when I was still at Oculus.

Change always sucks because people lose their jobs in the process, but in a world of limited resources, Meta heavily subsidizing their own (with money, marketing, placement, etc) at the expense of core technical progress and platform stability doesn't make sense. Crowding out the rest of the entire ecosystem, even less so. Every developer big and small, even the hyper-efficient ones, have had an extremely hard time competing with games developed by Meta-owned teams with budgets and teams that spend vastly in excess of earning potential. People will point out that these teams did an awesome job and got awesome reviews from critics and customers alike - yes, and fucked up though it is, that makes the problem even worse!

Some people will say "they should have just funded those developers as external studios rather than acquiring them, then!". Yes, I agree, but hindsight is 20/20. Do you think Oculus expected to only sell 700 copies of Rock Band VR after spending eight figures to make sure it was ready and awesome for Rift CV1 launch, to the point of bundling the guitar adapter with every single headset? Of course not, but sometimes you learn what the world actually wants from you the hard way.

TL;DR, I feel really bad for the people impacted, but this is a good thing thing for the long-term health of the industry, especially the ongoing incentives.

(Nobody at Meta knows I am making this post)"

Palmer Luckey’s Anduril Partners With Meta To Build Military XR Devices

Palmer Luckey’s Anduril is teaming up with Meta to build XR products for US and allied militaries, starting with the EagleEye AR/VR helmet.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

After being fired from Oculus by Facebook in 2017, Luckey founded Anduril, a defense firm that makes and sells drones, loitering munitions, interceptors, cruise missiles, sentry towers, and even unmanned submarines, as well as a software system that integrates them and other assets into a unified view of the battlespace. It was most recently valued at over $30 billion.

In 2024, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth publicly apologized to Luckey, an apology which he also publicly accepted. And last year, Anduril and Meta announced a partnership to build XR products for US and allied militaries, starting with the EagleEye AR/VR helmet.

"The people acting like I am some stooge who will obviously agree with everything Meta does need to read a history book or something, jfc

Oculus had a strong internal mandate to NOT be Nintendo and instead build things that build the ecosystem. Returning to that is good."

In response to the idea that he was "stooge who will obviously agree with everything Meta does", Luckey suggests those under that belief read a history book.

Supernatural continues to rank at or near number one on the Meta Quest charts in the wake of Meta’s decision to pause content updates and lay off much of the team behind one of VR’s most effective fitness apps.

Many in the VR fitness community have been looking into their options.

Supernatural has always been positioned as a premium experience. Access as of this writing is subscription-only, with users paying either $9.99 per month or $99 per year. That recurring revenue, combined with strong engagement and brand recognition, made Supernatural feel like a rare success story in consumer VR fitness.

Meta says the existing library, which spans thousands of workouts, will stay accessible. Current subscribers can continue paying for full access and new users are still able to sign up. In the short term, that keeps Supernatural viable, especially for users already invested in its structure and coaching. What happens to the mainstream music used in the project if licenses expire?

What makes Supernatural’s situation so disruptive is not just the pause in new content, but the loss of certainty. VR fitness depends on habit, trust, and long-term commitment. When a chart-topping, subscription-only app can be upended overnight, the entire health journey some people are may see potential disruption down the line.

In that context, ownership models, studio independence, and transparency do actually matter to many more than production value alone. At a moment when VR fitness is proving its ability to retain paying users and drive real behavior change, Meta appears to be stepping back from one of its strongest examples.

For users navigating this moment, the good news is that the ecosystem is deeper than it once was. The harder question is which platforms feel stable enough to earn long-term trust.

I've tried a number of VR fitness options besides Supernatural to check out what the latest options offer.

FunFitLand

I have spent a meaningful amount of time inside FunFitLand, starting back in its early alpha period. Early on, it leaned heavily on Supernatural’s blueprint, with real coaches in 3D as well as beautiful real-world and imaginary scenes for workouts. Over time, it moved past that influence and developed its own identity.

That evolution is most visible in the community and coaching. The tone is supportive and motivational without feeling performative. Coaches have sharpened their virtual instruction skills, with clearer cues, tighter pacing, and better movement guidance. On the workout side, the platform has expanded its movement set with additions like side steps and hammer strikes, giving sessions more physical range.

DanceFit has since evolved into GrooveFit, favoring looser, more expressive routines. The addition of FlowFit has been especially meaningful. It introduces a meditative, tai chi-inspired experience focused on balance, breath, and intentional movement. It reinforces the idea that VR fitness does not need to be all intensity to be effective.

FunFitLand also improved its music selection. The library now spans a wider range of genres, including cinematic tracks and some heavy metal. That added variety helps reduce repetition and gives different workout modes a clearer identity.

FunFitLand mirrors Supernatural’s pricing structure, offering both monthly and annual subscriptions. At the time of writing, a first-year annual discount of $69.99 appears to still be available for new subscribers, undercutting Supernatural’s standard annual fee. The app, which also supports hand tracking, has also launched on Apple Vision Pro, signaling ambition at a time when others are pulling back.

FitXR

FitXR began life as BoxVR in 2017 and has since grown into one of the most feature-rich VR fitness platforms available. It operates on a subscription model priced at $12.99 per month or $108.99 per year.

The platform, which also supports hand tracking, currently offers seven workout types: Box, Combat, HIIT, Sculpt, Dance, Zumba, and the newer mixed-reality SLAM mode. Workouts span multiple intensity levels and are supported by a progression and rewards system designed to encourage consistency. Regular content updates and monthly themed challenges keep the experience from feeling static.

FitXR uses recognizable fitness personalities as coaches, though in some modes, particularly Sculpt, Dance and Zumba, those coaches appear as stylized cartoon avatars. Choreography across disciplines is strong, and the workouts are fully capable of delivering a serious sweat.

Where FitXR falls slightly behind Supernatural and FunFitLand is in environmental range and polish. There are fewer workout environments, and those that do exist are not as breathtakingly beautiful - think functional rather than awe-inspiring. Hit feedback in the boxing and combat modes also lacks the satisfying auditory impact found in FunFitLand, which remains best in class in this area. Even so, FitXR’s breadth, progression systems, and consistent update cadence make it a strong long-term subscription for users who value variety and structure.

FitXR is also expanding beyond Meta’s ecosystem. The app is now available on Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset, running Android XR, marking an early move to support next-generation mixed reality hardware outside the Quest platform.

Les Mills XR Bodycombat

Les Mills XR Bodycombat takes a fundamentally different approach. It is sold as a one-time purchase priced at $29.99, with optional DLC packs typically around $9.99. For users wary of subscriptions, that alone makes it appealing.

The workouts are demanding and efficient. Sessions are designed to escalate intensity quickly, and it does not take long to work up a sweat. Real-life Les Mills coaches Dan Cohen and Rachael Newsham appear briefly at the start of sessions as holograms, then transition to voice-only guidance for the remainder of the workout.

The workouts share a familiar structure, and for people who train often, that repetition becomes noticeable over time. Even so, the effectiveness is hard to argue with. The sessions move quickly, the combinations stay demanding, and by the end you feel the work you put in. This is not a gentle program, and that intensity is what many users seek.

PowerBeats VR

PowerBeats VR has been a fixture in VR fitness since launching on SteamVR in 2019 and arriving on Meta Quest in 2021. On Quest, it retails for $22.99, with DLC packs typically priced between $2.99 and $5.99.

Its defining feature is customizability. PowerBeats VR allows users to upload their own music and fully customize workouts, sidestepping licensing concerns entirely. That level of control is uncommon and will appeal to users with established playlists or specific training goals.

The experience itself is less refined than many competitors. Visuals are straightforward, presentation is functional, and there is less emphasis on coaching personality or community. Even so, it remains enjoyable and effective at getting users moving when workouts are tuned to personal preferences.

The one-time purchase model combined with deep customization makes PowerBeats VR compelling for a specific audience. It does not sit in my personal top tier, but it fills a niche for many users.

XR Workout

XR Workout takes a different approach from most VR fitness platforms by prioritizing open movement and functional, full-body training over scripted classes and cinematic presentation. The app is free to download and use, with the free tier limited to eight minutes per day, with a starter membership promising multiplayer. A paid Pro membership unlocks the full feature set, including extended workout time, expanded modes and deeper customization tools.

One of its defining characteristics is controller-free movement through hand tracking, allowing users to exercise without holding controllers for extended sessions. Workouts rely heavily on bodyweight movements such as squats, jumps, running in place, and target-based striking that engages both upper and lower body at the same time. The result feels closer to an open training circuit than a guided class.

XR Workout also supports mixed reality, blending the user’s physical space into the workout environment so surroundings remain visible during sessions. Multiplayer workouts, playlist selection, and the ability to build or customize routines give the app a level of flexibility that most top platforms do not attempt.

XR Workout feels very different from most VR fitness apps. There is little hand-holding, and very little emphasis on presentation. You load in, start moving, and manage your own pace. If you are looking for coaching, structure, or personality, it will likely feel bare. If you are comfortable setting your own rhythm and just want a space to move hard for a few minutes, it does exactly that.

Starwave

Starwave sits closer to the dance rhythm game end of the VR fitness spectrum, but it overlaps in interesting ways with Supernatural’s Flow workouts. Movement is driven by techno and electronic tracks, with players slashing incoming notes using glowing, cosmic batons. The emphasis is on rhythm, timing, and continuous motion rather than precision or scoring.

There are no coaches, no guided programs, and no overt fitness framing. You load in, follow the beat, and keep moving. In practice, the experience can feel meditative in the same way Flow sessions do, especially during longer play sessions where movement becomes more fluid and less deliberate.

I have found Starwave to be an enjoyable and consistent addition to my weekly fitness rotation. It is not a replacement for structured workouts, but it works well as a lighter, movement-focused session that still gets the heart rate up.

Starwave is a one-time purchase, priced at $19.99 on the Meta Quest store (on sale as of this writing). Additional content is offered through an optional DLC pack at $4.99. There is no subscription model.

Other Fitness Experiences

The platforms I picked here represent what I would consider the top tier VR fitness experiences available in VR headsets right now. They combine polish, consistency, ongoing development, and enough depth to support long-term use. There are plenty of other VR fitness apps on the Quest platform, but many are less refined or narrower in scope, but they are still fun and fully capable of working up a sweat. For users experimenting with VR fitness for the first time, those options can still be worthwhile.

I certainly haven't covered everything, so please share your favorite ways to get fit in VR in the comments below too. If you're the developer behind an app building something new in this space, you can also email UploadVR via tips@uploadVR.com.

In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg bought Oculus VR for a couple billion dollars with the premise virtual reality was to become the foundation of personal computing.

In 2026, virtual reality is really starting to dig its roots into those foundations with OpenXR and Flatpaks. Operating systems based around VR headsets with eye tracking as a key feature are now receiving updates from Google, Valve and Apple.

New walled gardens are building up fast even as old ones fall down. Valve is coming for gaming, Google is relying on Android APKs, and Apple is building out a new kind of live sports and TV experience, all of it with VR as the display for the entire landscape.

Earlier this week many hundreds of people lost their jobs as Meta announced the most dramatic course-correction to its strategy yet. Even though VR's future has never been brighter, the weight of Meta's shift might lead some to believe "Oculus VR" here was a "legendary misadventure" and virtual reality is dead, again.

That couldn't be further from reality. If you care about the future you should have been reading UploadVR yesterday.

As I look across the last 10 years and try to piece together a picture of how Meta ended up here, I find one key technology conspicuously absent from almost all their headset and glasses designs, save for the failed Quest Pro.

Here's a look at why the absence of eye tracking limits VR's scale and Zuckerberg's ambition for a new social network clouded the Oculus vision.

Eye Tracking In 2017

In 2017 I attended a pair of eye tracking demos at GDC, one of them inside Valve's booth. From these demos I started to realize "just how empowering eye tracking will be for VR software designers."

"The additional information [eye tracking] provides will allow creators to make games that are fundamentally different from the current generation," I wrote. "It was like I had been suddenly handed a superpower and I naturally started using it as such — because it was fun. It is up to designers to figure out how much skill will be involved in achieving a particular task when the game knows exactly what you’re interested in at any given moment."

Architecting an entire VR platform over a decade without a solid plan for default implementation of eye tracking is a study in long-term vision meeting short-term execution.

"Apple's eye tracking is really nice," Zuckerberg noted on Instagram in 2024 after saying he tried Apple's headset. "We actually had those sensors back in Quest Pro. We took them out for Quest 3, and we're gonna bring them back in the future."

Mark Zuckerberg: Quest 3 Is Better Than Apple Vision Pro

Mark Zuckerberg tried Apple Vision Pro but claims Quest 3 is “better for the vast majority of things that people use mixed reality for”.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

You could see this tiny comment as one of the first public acknowledgments in which he is starting to realize something is deeply wrong with his current strategy.

When Facebook stopped selling Oculus Go it acknowledged the company wouldn't ever make another 3DoF headset. The same thing should have happened after the Quest Pro launched in 2022 with eye tracking. It didn't. By the time Meta ships a second VR headset with eye tracking, roughly five years will have passed from the first. The company is probably all in on full-body codec avatars being their prize for drawing you into their vision of the metaverse now, after Apple stole their initial thunder with FaceTime and Personas powered by good eye tracking.

I believe we now have evidence that VR headsets that can't see what you want by following the intent of your eyes aren't serious contenders as platform plays. Valve, Google, and Apple are all centered on the technology in their latest headsets for slightly different reasons. When you pull back far, you can see that Steam Frame's DK1 was the HTC Vive in 2016 and Valve Index was its DK2 from 2019.

Valve decided SteamOS in VR is ready for prime time in 2026 with Steam Frame's consumer release, following Apple deciding 2024 was the time to launch Vision Pro. Both use eye tracking to do key things for users.

From Rift To Quest

For Zuckerberg's organization, the ramping investments over the last decade would build the necessary technologies for a complete computing platform, starting with just a few billion to acquire the development team behind the Oculus Rift. Michael Abrash left Valve to found a modern Xerox PARC within Zuckerberg's larger organization, drawn by the commitment to invest in costly long-term research and development.

Meta built those technologies in a fairly public way by showing work as it went, both in sharing research and selling products. Solid ideas like Oculus Medium during this early period were spun out and continued at places like Adobe.

Starting in 2020, Facebook tried forcing the linking of its accounts to the use of Quest headsets and, in early 2021, it tried advertising in virtual reality. VR users quickly rejected both efforts.

Facebook's executives embarked on a rebranding effort to Meta alongside a new accounts system developed as a fresh start for Zuckerberg's new computing platform in headsets and glasses. By the end of 2021, Facebook was Meta.

Quest 2 was selling well. There was a well-curated store, their hand tracking was quickly approaching state of the art, and there was no credible competition in the United States shipping a standalone VR headset. Any stink associated with Facebook was being put behind Meta with Zuckerberg's bold new vision of the "Metaverse."

And a high-end Quest Pro with eye tracking was still coming in late 2022.

A Legendary Misadventure?

"Setting out to build the metaverse is not actually the best way to wind up with the metaverse," warned technical guide John Carmack in 2021. "The metaverse is a honeypot trap for architecture astronauts... Mark Zuckerberg has decided now is the time to build the metaverse....my worry is we could spend years and thousands of people possibly and wind up with things that didn't contribute all that much to the ways that people are actually using the devices and hardware today...we need to concentrate on actual products rather than technology, architecture, or initiatives."

In 2022 Carmack left Meta as he "wearied of the fight" and, four years later, thousands have departed as leadership reshaped the company in the form of VR and AR technologies. Until the layoffs in 2026, Meta's leadership and design failures didn't reek of the failure Carmack specifically warned about. Now they do.

After laying off the vast majority of the game developers Meta hired and tasking the rest to "Horizon" initiatives, do we see Beat Saber and Population: One become a last ditch effort to keep Horizon Worlds alive? Meta's latest move in December, as some of the first Steam Frame kits arrived with devs, was to delist Population: One from the Steam store, noting that it was a move to stop "unfair play" by cheaters using the openness of a PC to break the multiplayer experience.

The legendary misadventure here was the entire Horizon Worlds effort, attempting to force a social network by brute force onto the wrong technology at the wrong time in the wrong way. 2026 represents a reset of Meta's efforts, certainly, but the question is exactly how far back in this timeline Meta needs to go to figure out what went wrong, and which structural changes need to take place to fix it?

Gaming Studios Instead Of Eye Tracking

Meta acquired Beat Saber in November of 2019 and, over the next several years, doubled down multiple times by hiring dozens of developers skilled in the use of Oculus Touch controllers. Some of these decisions were set against unusual behavior patterns due to a generationally significant pandemic keeping people home near their headsets.

During the 2016-2018 period, NextVR streamed NBA games live to VR headsets, a startup called Spaces opened a walk around Terminator VR attraction, and the first decent eye tracking was demonstrated in consumer VR hardware. Apple released a headset that combined all those technologies mentioned from 2017 in a 2024 product.

At Meta, someone made decisions to ship headsets without eye tracking after shipping a single headset that tracks eyes. They have their reasons, but whatever they are may be the cause of Meta losing some of the lead in VR that was bought with Oculus in 2014. Whatever is going on with Meta's decision-making process, leadership tried to rectify it by the end of 2025 with the hiring of a key executive from Apple.

Now Meta faces a world where it might increase production for its non-VR glasses products. Meanwhile, Apple, Google, Samsung, and Valve ship or plan to ship VR headsets with eye tracking.

From Real To Virtual And Virtual To Real

Imagine two types of eyewear at opposite ends of this particular continuum from Paul Milgram's seminal 1994 paper. One at the right is a relatively heavy VR headset that is essentially all display. The other at left is a pair of ultra lightweight frames with no display. Today Meta ships Quest 3, 3S, and Ray-Ban glasses in each of these categories, and they all lack eye tracking.

Apple ships only the Vision Pro with eye tracking today and it is a $3,500 device not many people have tried. The headset does a little magic trick with this chart. It is rooted at the right edge of the chart, but software defaults to starting you at the left side. Turn the dial on the headset and the world can shift from your environment being fully "real" to fully "virtual" across the whole continuum.

Apple is surely readying something to secure the left side of the chart. When they launch, what features will they focus on and how might Apple and Meta eyewear differ?

Pointing Cameras In The Wrong Directions

If Vision Pro is a spatial computer I want Apple's answer to the Meta Ray-Ban glasses to function more like a spatial mouse. No display and all input.

Apple could take the sensors for tracking hand movements and eye movements from Vision Pro and put that technology into slim frames with Bluetooth and battery. Thin clear glasses can gather the same eye and finger input as a big enclosed VR headset. It's difficult, surely, but it's more useful than putting in a display system for one eye. The differentiating feature would be a universal remote for everything that's so impossibly advanced it could feel like magic almost everywhere.

• You should be able to operate an iPad or Apple TV, and maybe other Apple devices, the same way you do the menu of a Vision Pro. Just pinch and drag in the open air. Ex: While washing the dishes with your hands and watching a movie on your iPad, you look over and pause a movie without touching the tablet with your dirty hands.
• You should be able to run your finger along any flat surface as a virtual trackpad for any computer you're looking at.
• You should be able to touch type on any surface.

Google told me touch typing on any surface would be a solved problem in a couple of years at the end of 2024. In such a focused design, Apple could conceivably replace the mouse, trackpad and keyboard with eyewear at the opposite end of the spectrum from Vision Pro. I mean that literally because display-free means you only ever see the real environment through a pair of frames, and yet the glasses still track your eye movements the same as they do in Vision Pro.

In Apple Vision Pro, eye tracking is used to target what you're looking at so that when you "mouse click" by pinching your fingers together the whole system responds to exactly what you want in that moment. It's also used to drive the included Persona avatars and even the outward-facing display system showing recreated eyeballs to external viewers. That's a lot of technology, weight and expense Apple introduced in Vision Pro to fully enclose a person in a focused virtual location represented as an Apple home environment, and then anywhere else along the mixed reality spectrum using a dial and software.

None of that seems like a mass market need unless you had an experience in 2017 that instantly made you feel like a superhero in a VR headset. Why do VR headsets need eye tracking? For the same reason a computer needs a mouse. It is how you tell the computer what you want in a graphical user interface, even if you still need something else to select what you're looking at.

Legendary Tales is a dark fantasy RPG with physics-based combat that's just out on Quest.

Almost two years after its initial release on PC VR and PlayStation VR2, Legendary Tales is available now on the Meta Quest 3 and 3S. We found it has "satisfying" physics-based combat across its extensive dungeon-crawling, with the promise of more than 15 hours of content. Fully playable solo or in online co-op mode, its quest-driven storyline can be experienced with friends from the beginning all the way through to the end. While no specific port features were mentioned, developer Urban Wolf Games mentioned the Quest version has “the most advanced system updates that are not released on PCVR and PSVR2 yet.”

Akin to a Dark Souls experience in VR, the core gameplay mechanic of Legendary Tales is the exploration of loot-filled dungeons complete with skeletons, orcs, and challenging boss fights. Its focus on a hands-on crafting system allows players to collect materials to craft weapons, as well as dabble in alchemy to use various potions to aid in battle. The physics-based combat focuses on precise parrying to retaliate against enemy attacks and hopefully leave every encounter unscathed. Finally, its detailed skill tree gives a bevy of specializations as a rogue, mage, warrior, or a personalized hybrid build.

In a heartfelt Reddit post the day before the game’s release this week, the developer acknowledged the bad timing while also talking about their personal experience regarding developing for virtual reality and its challenges. A DLC expansion named “Dawn of History” with new items, maps, and enemies is expected later this year.

Legendary Tales is out now for Meta Quest, PS VR2, and Steam.

Fun Train says it is not renewing its license to publish Tarzan VR from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. and delisting the game from all platforms.

The Tarzan game was panned and earned a rare "avoid" rating from us in our review, titled "lord of the fumble." The publisher is dropping the game to $4.99 where they can until it's gone, claiming that if you buy it, it will "remain in your library and fully playable" after it is no longer for sale new. Fun Train "will not be supporting the game beyond Jan 31st 2026."

Fun Train is associated as publisher with The Exorcist VR and Twilight Zone VR as well as BlackGate and Jungle Man. BlackGate in particular is off to a strong start on the Quest Store after releasing late last year. Fun Train says its other games aren't affected.

'While we would like to renew the license and keep Tarzan available for new players, the current state of the VR market makes it increasingly difficult to keep legacy titles active across platforms." The email from Fun Train CEO Douglas Nabors notes. "With recent industry-wide studio closures and layoffs—particularly at Meta—it’s clear the market is under real pressure. At this stage, renewing the license for this IP is simply not commercially viable."

The game will no longer be for sale from January 31st on Quest, Steam, and PlayStation stores.

While we warned players to avoid this one and they did, I just spent $5 on Steam for the version of the game originally developed by Stonepunk Studios to keep in my library as a curiosity. What happens when I try to launch it on the Steam Frame in standalone? I'm not sure, but I wanted to have that piece of VR history in my library before it disappeared.

If you haven't had the chance to hear the song made for the Tarzan VR trailer, do give it a listen below before bidding farewell to "the lord of the fumble."

Meta is shutting down its Quest for business program in 2030, ending sales of commercial SKUs next month, and reducing existing subscriptions to $0/month.

Called Meta Horizon Managed Services since last year, the program was the latest iteration of the company's official offering for businesses to adopt its headsets, including a commercial license and warranty, priority support, and mass device management (MDM).

It started as Oculus for Business, a $900 SKU of the original Oculus Rift launched in 2017. Enterprise SKUs of Oculus Go and Oculus Quest were also made available in this program, until it was replaced by Meta Quest for Business in late 2023, before being renamed to Meta Horizon Managed Services last year. Last year's change also made the program mandatory for enterprise use.

Under the program, Quest headsets were sold at their regular consumer price plus a monthly subscription. There were two tiers of subscription available: Individual Mode for $15/month per headset or Shared Mode for $24/month per headset.

Individual Mode provisions the headset for one specific person, with their own Meta account, while Shared Mode shows a heavily streamlined system interface with only the apps remotely selected by the administrator available, and the settings are also pre-configured.

Administrators could manage headsets with Meta's Admin Center, or existing enterprise user management platforms like Microsoft Intune, VMware Workspace ONE, and Ivanti UEM.

Meta Is Shutting Down Horizon Workrooms Next Month

Meta is shutting down its Horizon Workrooms VR meeting software on February 16, with no direct replacement for its online meetings functionality.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

From February 20, Meta says it will cease selling commercial SKUs of Quest headsets, stop taking new customers for the Horizon Managed Services subscription, and reduce the subscription price for existing customers to $0/month.

From January 4, 2030, four years from now, the program will be shut down, and the software will no longer be supported.

"On behalf of Meta, we thank you for your support and partnership", the company tells the businesses that trusted it.

The news comes on the same week the company closed three of its acquired VR game studios, gutted another, stopped updates for its VR fitness service, canceled the sequel for Batman: Arkham Shadow, and announced the shutdown of Workrooms, all part of a wider move to shift spending from VR towards smart glasses.

Meta is shutting down its Horizon Workrooms VR meeting software on February 16.

If you're unaware, Workrooms is Meta's collaborative productivity app for Quest headsets, first launched in 2021. Workrooms lets you view your PC monitor inside VR and share your screen with teammates as Meta Avatars in a virtual meeting room. People who don't own a Quest can join via webcam through a web interface.

The app also has a solo Personal Office which gives you free extra monitors, effectively turning your laptop into a triple monitor setup.

Facebook Launches Horizon Workrooms To Power Remote Work

Facebook is moving to power remote work with a collaborative platform called Horizon Workrooms. The new service launches as an open beta testing release today free to use on the Web over video call or embodied in Oculus Quest 2, with the latter being the only entry point requiring a

UploadVRIan Hamilton

In summer 2024, Meta released an overhaul of Workrooms that streamlined the interface while removing major features, leading to significant backlash from users.

The update removed the virtual whiteboard in meeting rooms, a flagship feature of the app which the Touch Pro controllers were designed around, as well as all meeting room customization, the web-based text chat and file sharing system, and tracked keyboard support.

The main upside of the overhaul was its improvements to the solo Personal Office. But just over a year ago, Meta and Microsoft launched the official Windows 11 Remote Desktop feature for Quest's Horizon OS, which also allows spawning virtual extra side monitors.

The official Windows 11 Remote Desktop feature runs as OS-level windows, meaning that it supports the seamless multitasking feature added to Horizon OS in 2024, letting you use your PC while inside any VR or mixed reality app.

Quest 3’s Windows 11 Remote Desktop Gets Aspect Ratio Setting & Ultrawide Mode

The official Windows 11 Remote Desktop of Horizon OS now has 21:9 and 3:4 aspect ratio options, as well as an enveloping visionOS-like Ultrawide Mode.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Essentially, the Windows 11 integration fully supersedes the Personal Office of Workrooms. But what Meta isn't providing a replacement for is the online multi-user meeting room functionality.

Meta officially recommends Workrooms users to switch to Arthur, Microsoft Teams Immersive, or any other virtual meetings software on the Horizon Store. An example we'd point out is Fluid, which has excellent reviews and a strong focus on sharing your screen with others in VR.

"From 16 February 2026, you will no longer be able to access Workrooms, and any data associated with Workrooms will be deleted", Meta notes.

The news comes on the same week the company closed three of its acquired VR game studios, gutted another, stopped updates for its VR fitness service, and canceled the sequel for Batman: Arkham Shadow, a wider move to shift spending from VR towards smart glasses.

Henning Koczy was offered an unusual gig in October of 2012.

He was invited to spend a little over two months on an island in tropical Belize with Lucas Martell and other artists to make an animated short film together. You should really go spend 10 minutes with the film, embedded below, but if you don't have the time right now let me give you a quick overview.

A lighthouse pokes out of a vast desert stretching to the horizon. The world wasn't always like this and, above this desolate landscape, a lone pilot flies toward a small cloud. The pilot doesn't seem to have a plan, exactly, but they've strapped a dream to this plane anyway. Hope is little more than a sketch the pilot put on paper labeled "Rain Maker" and the pilot isn't alone in these dangerous skies. Other planes with vast funnels flying behind them aim to pull the last bit of water from the air first.

Can the pilot complete their mission and make it rain before so many others, desperate for water too, knock them out of the sky?

Martell's gathering of artists did everything on that island from storyboarding to animation over that two-month span, drawing inspiration from one another and their island surroundings. That's where a company was born called Mighty Coconut.

"I had about a quarter of what it would've taken to pay everyone their typical day rates, but that turned out to be enough to fly everyone down, rent houses, pay for food, small per diems, etc.," Martell wrote on a diary video recalling that 'Destination Production'. "This trip was all self-funded through my own freelance gigs."

Martell hasn't taken any outside investment for Mighty Coconut and didn't release a VR game until 2020, when he crested the wave of Oculus Quest 2 headsets selling during the pandemic with the release of Walkabout Mini Golf. These days enough people pay for a safe and fun escape inside each new course he releases that Mighty Coconut employs 34 people contributing oceans of art, animation, music and gameplay.

Martell feels some pressure.

Other independent studios, like Pistol Whip developer Cloudhead, reduced headcount in the face of changing priorities at platform companies. More than a decade after that creative getaway in Belize founding Mighty Coconut, is it possible Martell feels a bit like that pilot flying toward the cloud? My exclusive tour of Tiki à Coco with Koczy recalls his time on that island and the origins of Mighty Coconut as we move along the Walkabout path.

We start at a crashed plane on the beach of a tropical island with drums pounding in the distance. Huts cover the island but, somehow, the one that's furthest away is the biggest. That curiosity drawn straight into the landscape invites us to investigate further and, along the way, we discover the mythical origins of mini golf.

Hail Jerry

Long ago a coconut fell from a tree and rolled into a hole in the ground.

His name was Jerry, and the game of golf was born to a bunch of coconuts who saw the very first hole-in-one. Jerry's fall led to a whole culture of happy coconuts living on a volcanic island in virtual reality.

"Jerry fell out of a coconut tree and fell into a hole and in doing so created golf," art director Don Carson explained on the tour. "And so it's an island inhabited with coconuts that worship the game of golf. And so that's the story basically."

Mighty Coconut's artists offer us a tapestry across the back wall of a tiki hut depicting the fall of Jerry. Exit the side of the hut and you make your way into a bustling village. You might want to stop for a photo with the CocoVision camera in front of the coconut baby taking its first rolls between mom and dad.

Walkabout introduced some of its first animated characters to the game with the release of Labyrinth in 2022. Now with Tiki à Coco, Walkabout's animators find their footing in a place without any. That's Mighty Coconut canon. The Coconuts, as the artists call themselves, decided their virtual coconuts lack feet. At one hole, a bunch of bandaged coconuts cheer on their fearful friend at the very edge of rolling off a plank above and into a "Jerry's Fall" recreation.

Koczy said after my interview he doesn't stop and think about how unusual his job is until I bring it up on our tours. But it's a bit striking, isn't it?

In 2012, he worked for Lucas Martell on a tropical island making a 10-minute animated film about a visionary producing a spark of something magical from almost nothing at all.

In 2025, he worked for Lucas Martell from home designing 36 holes of mini golf for a tropical island inhabited by happy little coconuts in virtual reality.

Meta has canceled the Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel, UploadVR has learned, and conducted significant layoffs at Camouflaj, the developer of the first game.

Unlike Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard's Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR), Camouflaj has not been entirely shut down. But it has seen significant layoffs, and will no longer be developing VR games.

Further, UploadVR can confirm that Sanzaru was working on the Arkham Shadow sequel, and the studio's closure earlier this week ended this work.

Meta Closes Deadpool VR, Asgard’s Wrath & Resident Evil 4 VR Studios

Meta has shut down Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR), UploadVR can confirm.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Batman: Arkham Shadow was the blockbuster bundled title for Quest 3S, given for free with new headset purchases for well over a year, and we strongly praised it in our review.

In 2024, the founder and studio head of Camouflaj, Ryan Payton, told UploadVR that he would "love to" make a sequel. Then, four months ago, the voice actor for Commissioner Gordon confirmed that a sequel was about to enter development.

Work on that sequel had started – at Sanzaru Games rather than Camouflaj – but has now fully ended, and the sequel will no longer be happening.

Batman: Arkham Shadow Sequel Entering Development, Voice Actor Confirms

A Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel is about to enter development, the voice actor for Commissioner Gordon confirmed.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Taking into account the Camouflaj layoffs, we can now confirm that only three game studios still remain meaningfully active at Meta:

• Beat Games (Beat Saber)
• BigBox (Population: One)
• Ouro Interactive (Super Rumble, Super Strike)

Beat Saber and Population: One are live service games, and there's no indication of a sequel arriving for either. Meanwhile, Ouro Interactive's focus remains entirely on Horizon Worlds.

The closure of three studios and significant layoffs at Camouflaj are part of a wider strategy shift at Meta, seeing funding from VR reallocated toward smart glasses, a reaction to the sales momentum the company saw last year for each type of device.

Through at least the first three quarters of the year, Quest headset sales were down compared to 2024. Meanwhile, sales of Ray-Ban Meta glasses skyrocketed, with several variants selling as fast as they can be manufactured. This week, Bloomberg reported that Meta was considering doubling or even tripling smart glasses production capacity.

Last month, Meta officially confirmed "shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables", and the layoffs at its acquired studios are some of the first casualties of this shift.

Neat Corp's latest title is due out on Steam in February with a major new feature included.

The Norse mythology-based roguelite Crossings was originally planned to release simultaneously on Quest and PCVR on December 18, 2025. This seemed to be the case as late as December 10, 2025, when a post on the Crossings X account still promoted a dual platform release. A late change, however, saw the title launch only on Quest in 2025 and without the anticipated co-op feature.

February 13, 2026 is the launch of the Steam version of the game as well as the cooperative gameplay for both platforms, according to Neat, with cross-play supported between them.

Crossings previously dropped a limited-time demo version during the Fall 2025 Steam Next Fest this past October as well as an accompanying demo on Quest. The co-op feature will see players "cross paths with others" who "naturally and seamlessly appear in the same world" and "without speaking".

"Communicate with body language, combat, and attention," the game's official description explains on Steam. "Split apart or stay close—your journeys intertwine, but your destiny is always your own."

We've played versions of the game but the mechanic of impromptu teamwork appears fundamental to the full promise of Crossings, so we are holding back our review until the co-op mode launches on both platforms.

Crossings is out now for Meta Quest 3 and 3S for $9.99.

Your enjoyment of Stellar Cafe comes down to two things: how you feel about AI in video games and how good of a conversationalist you are.

I've had some experience with AI-driven NPCs in games before, specifically in Skyrim (with mods) and former-social-VR-turned-MMORPG Riff XR. The difference with these two examples is that those games have much more to offer than said AI NPCs whereas Stellar Cafe lives and dies on the characters and your interactions with them. It makes for a unique experience that rolls credits before the fairly simple premise wears thin.

Developer AstroBeam's claim to fame is being helmed by Devin Reimer, one of the co-creators of Job Simulator, and Stellar Cafe feels very much inspired by that VR classic while taking the concept of sentient robot interactions to the next level. You play as, well, yourself, with James, your robot barista, asking your name and using it for the rest of the game. Having played dozens of games where the player can name the main character, only to watch voice-acted NPCs never actually say it, this was surprisingly an immersive touch.

After talking shop with James, you learn that James is throwing a party for Patch Day, an upcoming holiday, but the nine other RSVPs have only replied 'maybe.' James requests your help to find out why each robot is on the fence and convince them to turn that 'maybe' into a 'yes.' The rest of the game plays out like a linear sandbox. You progress through the robots in groups of three across three cycles (days), but how you solve their problems is entirely down to your creativity.

For example, one bot can't attend the party because they have to work at a job they hate and would rather quit. Through a series of prompted responses, you assist this bot in writing a resignation email. After that email is done, it gets sent to the supervisor who replies in short order. I played the first three scenarios in the game twice (including this one), using wildly different approaches each time, and the responses were indeed different. Another example is Captain (one of the few names I remember as I write this review) who needs your help to come up with a story pitch. The sky is the limit since your dialog choices and the responses are not pre-determined. I can see this game being played multiple times to see just how wacky of a response you can get from the robots.

Frankly, these characters felt more realized with better personality traits and voices than I've encountered in most VR games. I enjoy puzzle games in general and it was a trip to have the puzzle actually talk back to you. Having said that, a little goes a long way here. Each encounter can be completed inside 10 minutes and some of them landed better than others. I won't give any more specifics to avoid spoilers, but there were two in particular I could not wait to move on from. Also, there are one or two phrases that every robot says that got old pretty quickly.

Another unique part of the game is that it is entirely driven by your voice, including the movement. Utilizing your Quest's microphone, you instruct your AI assistant, Visor, to move you from location to location (the counter, the booths, and the tables) and of course you spend the entire time talking. There are physical interactions as well, with some bots having tablets to pick up and view, and of course, plenty of custom drinks from James.

All of the voice interactions work perfectly fine, but the tablets were a bit jittery at times. Stellar Cafe can be played with controllers or hand-tracking and the game suggests using the latter. Unfortunately, my Quest kept detecting my controllers, to the point where I had to turn on hand-tracking. That's not a shortcoming of the game itself but Meta's operating system, though I still wanted to point it out in case other players bump into it. There were also instances where I looked around the cafe during a conversation and the bot registered it as me shaking my head no, forcing me to redo a prompt or response.

Stellar Cafe's full runtime is about 2 hours, including the ending. However, I can see players who enjoy the live AI interaction toying with the bots for hours on end. There were a few hiccups in the interactions, like sometimes James would make me a drink and deliver it to me, then tell me the drink would be ready soon. To the game's credit, I called James out on this every time it happened and he responded appropriately, apologizing and saying something about his timing circuits misfiring. Nicely done.

Visually, Stellar Cafe isn't exactly pushing the boundaries of standalone VR. If you've played any Owlchemy Labs game (Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator, etc.), it's about that level of visual fidelity. However, take your time and look around the cafe. There are a ton of little touches that show a level of care and sense of humor in the single-level game design. The television above James plays a rotation of news broadcasts, weather reports, a humorous riff on the Home Shopping Network, and more. I got a kick out of the employee of the month plaques too.

Finally, to address the elephant in the room: yes, this is ostensibly an artificial intelligence game. If you are uneasy or outright opposed to the use of AI in video games, Stellar Cafe is not going to change your mind. It's not a revolutionary step forward for the medium, but it is an interesting thought experiment into how this technology can be applied.

Stellar Cafe - The Final Verdict

Stellar Cafe is a lighthearted, relatively short AI experience that wraps up its simple story before outstaying its welcome. I do wish it were longer, but what's here is quite enjoyable and worth a pickup as a glimpse into what feels like an inevitable future for gaming, especially social sim settings like this.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.

CharacterBank set out to work on Knights of Fiona aiming to take what they learned from Ruinsmagus into a more expansive and ambitious role-playing game.

Part of that journey involves making it multiplayer.

“ Ruinsmagus was a full single-player experience when we launched it, and we heard a lot from players about wanting to keep playing and exploring that world, so creating this large world that players could keep visiting was our biggest goal with this experience,” explains Shuto Mikami, the CEO of CharacterBank, on the origins of this new title. “Plus, with that previous game, the actual gameplay is almost more linked to a shooter game in how you played it, and we wanted to create something that felt more like an RPG. Using magic that didn’t feel like shooting bullets, swordplay, bows, introducing these styles that allow the game to feel more like this genre.”

I jumped into Knights of Fiona for the first time in an exclusive demo at the studio’s offices in Kyoto, Japan, looking at their effort to build something that feels like a true, traditional RPG adventure. I can see similarities to the hub world of Ruinsmagus and this title, but this time the hub is one continuous and larger town that feels more alive, even in these early stages. We were still required to warp to some locations of the town, but that should change with further development.

Rather than feeling limited to just you and a very small cast of characters, you have a team of party members and a supporting cast each as visually distinct and personality-driven as the last. The train station, the main starting point for a lot of missions, has moving trains and a large space to explore.

It’s when jumping into the quests themselves that the distinctions and evolution of this experience compared to CharacterBank’s prior work becomes most apparent. As Mikami notes, the first thing that stands out in the gameplay loop compared to Ruinsmagus is just how much additional depth and variety exists in terms of combat. You have bows, swords of all sizes, mage staffs and more at your disposal, and not only does each class feel distinctly unique to one another, weapons within those same classes feel unique and can be further upgraded to improve their strength and suit your style.

Firing an arrow, for example, requires a full-bodied, two-handed pull back of the bow. Aim and fire with the assistance of a guide for the arrow’s flight path, which allows us to attack from a safe distance countered by the slower nature of these weapons. Using swords of all sizes has a distinct feel and heft despite the typical limitations of the virtual form that makes it impossible to differentiate the weight of a virtual object, instead built into how you swing these weapons and approach combat. If magic can feel the closest to the combat of Ruinsmagus, the way you aim and the various spells that differ between staffs allow for a degree of control and variety. Even then, more than just swinging aimlessly, you have multiple actions assigned to various buttons for varied attacks, and everything from positioning to learning attack patterns is important for victory.

The game further encourages you to switch between these weapons, not just because of the weapons themselves but everything to do with upgrades and passive abilities that support your loadout. These come in the form of cards received randomly as rewards after each quest as well as from the in-game shop. These cards will also impact passive abilities that can improve base strength and introduce additional augmentations to your weapon’s abilities. You can further merge weapon cards to improve the level and experience of weapons beyond merely using them in action to essentially craft new weapons, and place passive cards in open slots to give you an edge in battle. The rarity and power of these cards increases based on difficulty chosen for each quest, with encouragement to revisit quests to get these abilities.

Gameplay focuses on fun over realism in combat and mechanic design, he explains. “We brought in the real weapons to try so we had an idea of how we wanted to replicate the feel of them in the game. That being said, one of the things we were considerate about was that, when we were designing for the sword and the bow, was that it wasn’t too technical. We want to make sure this is accessible for casual players and people who just want to jump in and experience this world.”

Which is important when creating a multiplayer experience you can play with friends. Another distinct characteristic of Knights of Fiona is that this is an online game at its core. All quests are taken on as a party, whether CPUs or online with friends, and you can engage in proximity voice chat and explore the hub world together also. Playing the game with just a few of the developers at their offices, lots of the fun of the experience was derived merely by exploring and talking amongst ourselves, just as much as it was fighting through hordes and large boss fights.

How you approach missions varies wildly based on your party and the quest itself. Playing through most of the first chapter including its finale during our session, we experienced the story as we saw off the first major threat, going from fighting early low-level hordes in open fields as we learned to gain the trust of the town to fighting off against the game’s first boss, an angry fire-breathing dragon. This set-piece is a clear statement of intent for the team’s ambition as we rush through waves of enemies and projectiles on the burning bridge that enters the town, only to come across a large bright-red dragon with eyes intent to kill, breathing fire and shaking the world with every attack. With a group you can split duties and distract the dragon, while alone you’re faced with a battle of wits and agility, not just strength.

It’s impressive, but only a small idea of what’s to come. Enemies of world-ending, literally titanic proportions are being teased, to such a scale that simply looking up at them in VR makes you feel like an ant, and I can barely even speculate how you would overcome their might. It’s promised to be longer but varied in setting as you trek out on a globe-trotting adventure in order to save it, even if your home in Gallia remains a hub. All with a rich cast of characters to support you along.

While the core story will have a definitive ending, it’s possible to replay missions on new difficulties for new weapons and ability cards, and while the team haven’t confirmed definitive plans at this stage, they’re open to the idea of much more.

According to the game’s director, HOI, multiplayer and online elements are about more than merely keeping players coming back, but creating something that can stick with people. Talking about their hopes for the game, they noted, “I want people to finish this game and think, I want to spend more time in this world, I want to get to know these characters more, about their relationships, what other adventures they may go on and the like. I want people wanting to learn more about this world. Lately, as soon as a game, a manga or an anime has finished, it’s forgotten by the next weekend, which is a little sad considering the love and work that went into it. Whether on their own or with other players, we want people to keep coming back to experience more in this place.”

In an introductory prologue, we arrived in this place unaware of the dangers it was soon to face in the oncoming war. Its people are losing hope, and that’s where you come in. You end up entrusted with leading the resistance to this fight by the leaders of Gallia, including some of its ruling figures like the large, tree-like Kelnund and Leonhardt, make allies with the knight Geisenberg, and find support from characters in the town like the purple-skinned alchemist Nebulous Babbege.

With characters, each design is as distinct as they are intriguing, soaked in a visual design conveying a history beyond what we are privy to in this adventure. Lots of time was spent on the design process before a line of code was made from design to even assigning characters their own Myers-Briggs-style personality types, HOI explains. “I often find that if you think about the story and create the world before you think about its characters, you end up creating characters that feel like gods in their world, which isn’t a good thing. So the first thing we would consider with every character is what is their personality, what are their motivations, what are their desires, what or who do they love, things like that.

“For example, we’d consider the role that a character is expected to take upon, how they feel about that role, the pressures elsewhere, things like that. The characters would be born from considering their internal emotions based on the life they have around them. Who could they talk to about these things? What are their more immediate problems and concerns? When it came to thinking about the setting, well, Gallia is a very medieval-inspired setting, so we considered philosophies of the time, what would the internal political debates of the location be, what sort of world and ruling would we have here, what does class division look like in this setting, we’d consider all of this from the earliest stages.

“Then we would bring in the designers. Maybe we would have some rough sketches of the settings, characters and ideas, but the designers would help to brush them up and help build them out further, or the designers would create it all from scratch based on the original designs. We also have a bigger cast, which helps. In Ruinsmagus, we had Iris as our main character, but she also had to be a guide for the player, she had a lot of roles to fill. Fiona started in this place, but with more characters we could think more about how she would react to different things and then give her deeper character development from there.”

Another distinct characteristic of Knights of Fiona is that this is an online game at its core. All quests are taken on as a party, whether CPUs or online with friends, and you can engage in proximity voice chat and explore the hub world together also. Playing the game with just a few of the developers at the office, so much fun was derived just by exploring and talking and having fun in this area. While the core story will have a definitive ending, it’s possible to replay missions on new difficulties for new weapons and ability cards, and while the team haven’t confirmed definitive plans at this stage, they’re open to the idea of new stories, time-exclusive skins and more to support the online service and to keep the game as something to return to with friends.

Even in this early stage, the game feels alive. The opening hub town includes lots of areas to explore and create your own fun. While not currently active due to the game not yet launching to the public, community integration in the town hall exists in the form of a notice board to allow fanart shared in Discord with players.

Currently in place of fan art are doodles from the staff, and you can see the love for these characters in all the fun sketches made by the team (with particular love for my own early favorite Nebulous Babbege). You can feel the love for this game, this world, and what it means to the team behind it in all the subtle details in the town and world, the care and refinement in card art for weapons and abilities and in the art in the town, and how much it means. For director HOI creating the story, he mentioned that one of the key inspirations was the challenge and responsibility of creating a new game and the expectations, something that weaves its way into the world and ideas driving Knights of Fiona.

Beyond simply being something new and much fun to play through even at this early stage, you can feel that this is the game that CharacterBank as a studio have been working toward for some time. It brings across ideas from much of their other works, builds beyond what they were able to achieve in Ruinsmagus, and charts ambitious ground for RPGs in VR. To support post-launch additional content the team is launching a Kickstarter campaign.

With everything considered, it's a tall order. If the team can fully deliver on all of its ideas, we could be in for something truly special.

Meta and Ray-Ban owner EssilorLuxottica are discussing doubling or even tripling their smart glasses production capacity, Bloomberg reports.

Just under a year ago, when revealing that 2 million units of Ray-Ban Meta glasses had been sold so far, EssilorLuxottica told investors that it planned to increase annual production capacity to 10 million units by the end of 2026, citing the "great success" of the product.

Then, in its Q3 investor call in October, EssilorLuxottica said that its smart glasses business was doing "exceptionally well", to the point where it now accounted for more than a third of its revenue growth, telling investors that it was accelerating the timeline for the 10 million annual production capacity.

Now, Bloomberg reports that Meta and EssilorLuxottica are discussing doubling this production target to 20 million annual units, with the possibility of tripling it to 30 million if future demand justifies it.

According to Bloomberg, Meta is hoping to build on its lead in the smart glasses market and expand its footprint before competition from Apple and Google arrives.

Google has repeatedly teased smart glasses with a HUD at events like TED and I/O, and announced last year that it's working with the eyewear companies Gentle Monster and Warby Parker on Gemini smart glasses, and will work with Kering Eyewear in the future. Multiple South Korean news outlets have reported that Samsung plans to launch a Meta Ray-Ban Display competitor this year, powered by Google software, a similar strategy to the Galaxy XR headset.

Meanwhile, in October Bloomberg reported that Apple moved staff off the cheaper and lighter Vision headset project to prioritize shipping smart glasses sooner. Apple's first glasses could be revealed as soon as this year ahead of a release in 2027, the report claimed.

Meta Closes Deadpool VR, Asgard’s Wrath & Resident Evil 4 VR Studios

Meta has shut down Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR), UploadVR can confirm.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Meta and EssilorLuxottica's reported discussions come as Meta laid off over 10% of Reality Labs, its smart glasses, VR, and "metaverse" division, including the entirety of three of its VR game studios. The company previously confirmed "shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables", and reducing spending on VR content to increase investment in smart glasses production capacity seems to be this strategy in action.

Meta says Supernatural will no longer receive any "new content or feature updates".

While we reported Armature, Twisted Pixel and Sanzaru Games joining the list of studios shut down by Meta, another product acquired by Mark Zuckerberg "will no longer receive new content or feature updates", according to a note posted to the official Supernatural group on Facebook.

Subscribers of the $10/month VR fitness app can still log in and interact with the ghosts of their coaches, like the laugh track on an old TV show, but the trainers who defined the fitness service – humans like Leanne Pedante credited by some of the service's users for saving their lives – will not be making new appearances in Quest headsets.

How VR Fitness Is Saving Lives

If VR is dying why are people saying VR fitness saved their lives?

UploadVRIan Hamilton

"What the fuck," wrote one user on the official Supernatural Community group with 60 upvotes. "I am so sorry for all the amazing coaches who are losing jobs and the people in the background. And so upset that the only thing I've consistently loved for exercise is ending. What happens when song license is over?"

Another comment with more than 600 upvotes: "If you're no longer updating the content, there should no longer be a yearly fee. If content is and will remain static, there should be a one time charge."

"As a user since the beginning, I feel like my heart's been ripped out!" wrote another.

Meta directed subscribers with questions to email support.

Article updated after publication to clarify that Supernatural's existing content will remain available.

Smash Drums’ new campaign mode, “God of Drums,” is now available on PlayStation VR2 after previously releasing on Quest in early access.

First launched last November for Meta Quest in early access, the new Smash Drums campaign mode is rocking its way to PlayStation VR2 today. The free campaign update, dubbed ‘God of Drums,’ adds more than 100 missions, along with new legendary skins for the drummer’s head and drumsticks. The gameplay unfolds in new areas, unlike the sprawling stadiums the base modes feature. As I mentioned in my impressions that “a career mode would be welcome,” this update is a nice surprise for more goal-oriented rhythm players.

Accessible through the Arcade Mode in the Main Menu, players start as a lowly novice, making their way through a path akin to a lightning strike, all the way to becoming a God of Drums in an RPG-style progression system. Depending on the performance of every song played, new missions will be unlocked based on the number of stars obtained. To unlock the new level players gesture into the air like a real rockstar.

Each mission rotates among the Arcade, Fusion, and Classic modes. These styles change how to hit the notes: from a classic drum kit to seeing the cymbal or snare arrive from a distance to a more Rock Band-inspired style, with notes descending to respective colors to hit at a precise time. As suggested by PotamWorks, the new mode should last anywhere between three and six hours.

Smash Drums’ new campaign mode, God of Drums, is available now on Quest and PlayStation VR2.

Meta shut down Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard's Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR).

The New York Times reported earlier that Meta is laying off more than 10% of its Reality Labs division, specifically targeting teams working on VR and Horizon Worlds.

Now, UploadVR can confirm that these layoffs are being conducted today, and we've seen a document indicating the entirety of three of Meta's acquired VR games studios are affected: Twisted Pixel Games, Sanzaru Games, and Armature.

Twisted Pixel Games

Twisted Pixel Games was founded in 2006 and mostly made Xbox games published by Microsoft for the first decade of its existence. In fact, Microsoft owned the studio from 2011 until 2015, when it became an independent company again.

Wilson’s Heart Review: The Oculus Rift’s Stylish New Thriller Delivers

WARNING: This is a review for Wilson’s Heart. We’ve done our best to keep things spoiler-free but some very light story elements and a few gameplay surprises will be revealed. Do you know that feeling you get when you’re standing at the end of a long, dark

UploadVRJoe Durbin

On contract from Facebook, between 2017 and 2019 Twisted Pixel released four VR games:

• Wilson's Heart (Rift): a 2017 black & white psychological horror game with voice acting from Peter Weller, Alfred Molina, Rosario Dawson, and Michael B. Jordan.
• B-Team (Go/Quest): a 2018 collection of minigames, including a running game where you avoid obstacles and a wave shooter, ported to Quest in 2020.
• Defector (Rift): a 2019 action-packed spy thriller reminiscent of Mission: Impossible.
• Path of the Warrior (Rift/Quest): a 2019 brawler, essentially a first-person VR take on games like Streets of Rage, Final Fight, or Double Dragon.

Marvel’s Deadpool VR Review: Merc With A Meta Quest

Marvel’s Deadpool VR captures the antihero’s essence well, but doesn’t fully deliver on the potential of its combat.

UploadVRPete Austin

In 2022, Twisted Pixel Games was acquired by Meta. And just two months ago, it released what it had been working on since then: Deadpool VR, the latest Quest-exclusive VR blockbuster.

That Meta is shutting down the studio already strongly suggests the $50 exclusive did not sell as well as the company had hoped, or that it didn't spur enough new Quest headset sales, the real purpose of Meta's high-budget content.

Sanzaru Games

Sanzaru Games was also founded in 2006, and made a combination of its own games and contract titles for companies such as Sony, porting the original God of War series to PS Vita.

Asgard’s Wrath Review: VR’s Best And Most Ambitious Game Yet

The massive action-adventure RPG from Sanzaru Games, Asgard’s Wrath, is finally releasing on October 10th and we’ve spent the better part of the last few days immersing ourselves in the annals of Norse mythology to bring you our full, comprehensive review. Let me be extremely and immediately clear:

UploadVRDavid Jagneaux

Sanzaru Games was also contracted by Facebook to build VR games for the Oculus Rift and its Touch controllers, between 2016 and 2019:

• Ripcoil (2016): a launch title for the Oculus Touch controllers that was essentially an active VR take on Pong, where you leaned your body to catch and throw a cybernetic frisbee.
• VR Sports Challenge (2016): another Oculus Touch launch title that featured football, basketball, hockey, and baseball, hoping to be the Wii Sports of early PC VR.
• Marvel Powers United VR (2018): Facebook's 2018 blockbuster title for Rift+Touch, featuring 18 playable Marvel superheroes and online multiplayer co-op. Meta shut down the game in 2020, and while a fan project brought back singleplayer in 2024, Meta got it taken down.
• Asgard's Wrath (2019): one of the meatiest made-for-VR games of all time, Facebook's 2019 Rift exclusive and Oculus Link launch title, an action-adventure RPG with over 30 hours of gameplay.

In 2020, Sanzaru Games was acquired by Facebook, and in 2023 released Asgard's Wrath 2, taking the core essence of Asgard's Wrath to Quest 2 and Quest 3 standalone, with a semi-open world and a campaign more than 60 hours long.

Asgard’s Wrath 2 Gets Last Content Update As Sanzaru Games Looks To The “Next Big Thing”

Asgard’s Wrath 2 has received its last content update, and developer Sanzaru Games are working on the “next big thing.”

UploadVRHenry Stockdale

Exactly one year ago, Sanzaru released the last major content update for Asgard's Wrath 2, stating that it was now working on the “next big thing” with no detail released on what that would be before the studio closed.

Armature Studio

Founded in 2008, Armature Studio was mainly a porting studio, bringing PC titles to consoles and console titles to PS Vita.

Like Twisted Pixel and Sanzaru, Armature too was contracted by Facebook to build early consumer VR games:

• Fail Factory (2017): a whimsical puzzle game for the Samsung Gear VR where you complete tasks in a cartoon robot factory. It was later ported to Oculus Go, Rift, and Quest.
• Sports Scramble (2019): a launch title for the Oculus Quest and yet another hopeful "Wii Sports of VR", it included tennis, bowling, and baseball.
• Resident Evil 4 VR (2021): By far Armature's most significant VR project was porting Resident Evil 4 to Quest 2, one of the first major traditional games to arrive on standalone headsets.

Resident Evil 4 VR Review: An Incredible Way To Revisit A Classic

There are clear issues with the port and you should play the original first, but Resident Evil 4 is still a powerful experience in VR. Read on for our Resident Evil 4 VR review. Like you, I’m sure, I was worried. Very worried, in fact. Fans are rightfully protective

UploadVRJamie Feltham

Armature was acquired by Meta in 2022, and many VR gamers had been eagerly anticipating what it had been working on since. Whatever it was, Armature too is now shut down.

Camouflaj & Others Continue

These are not the first acquired VR game studios Meta has eliminated.

In 2024, the company shut down Lone Echo and Echo Arena creator Ready At Dawn. And last year it merged Onward developer Downpour Interactive into Camouflaj, the developer of Batman: Arkham Shadow, after ceasing development of the VR shooter.

Meta Shutters Echo Arena & Lone Echo Creator Ready At Dawn

Meta shut down the development studio behind some of VR’s best games.

UploadVRIan Hamilton

According to the document UploadVR saw, four game studios still remain active at Meta:

• Beat Games (Beat Saber)
• BigBox (Population: One)
• Camouflaj (Batman: Arkham Shadow)
• Ouro Interactive (Super Rumble, Super Strike)

Beat Saber and Population: One are live service games, and there's no indication of a sequel arriving for either. For Camouflaj, four months ago the voice actor for Commissioner Gordon confirmed that a Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel was about to enter development. It's unclear whether this is still happening, though UploadVR can confirm that Camouflaj is not on the complete shutdown list.

Batman: Arkham Shadow Sequel Entering Development, Voice Actor Confirms

A Batman: Arkham Shadow sequel is about to enter development, the voice actor for Commissioner Gordon confirmed.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

The closure of three studios is part of a wider strategy shift at Meta, seeing funding from VR reallocated toward smart glasses, a reaction to the sales momentum the company saw last year for each type of device.

Through at least the first three quarters of the year, Quest headset sales were down compared to 2024. Meanwhile, sales of Ray-Ban Meta glasses skyrocketed, with several variants selling as fast as they can be manufactured.

Last month, Meta officially confirmed "shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables", and the closures of Twisted Pixel, Sanzaru, and Armature are some of the first casualties of this shift.

Millions of people plan their weekends around a visit to virtual reality.

Solid total figures are hard to come by given the competitive nature of the immersive industry. A great many people are solo flying or driving in VR headsets, and spending time in single-player offline virtual worlds where they watch movies in virtual theaters, shoot at virtual gun ranges, bowl at virtual alleys, fish at virtual ponds, or play games in virtual apartments. In many cases, the designers of these digital spaces have zero interest in tracking the usage of the visitors to the spaces they've made.

Our systems for tracking and monetizing actions on the Internet and on Earth are alien to a generation learning to entertain themselves distributing spaces online to anyone who might wish to exit reality for half a day of headset sim and chill. For all intents and purposes, these people are pretty much just packing up in reality after the week is done with them and setting off for parts unknown in VR with the freedom of the weekend.

When it comes to going online and interacting with others, some of the most popular destinations in headset, like VRChat and Rec Room, also have flat-screen editions that make it difficult to cut out a singular figure on how many people are wearing a VR headset and being transported at any given moment. And in some of these places, where the servers need to scale constantly to accommodate fluid interactions delivered everywhere, there's a constant flow of people arriving and departing in and out of headsets.

On New Year's Eve, nearly 150,000 people spent the holiday in VRChat worlds, a majority of them in headset while setting a concurrent user record as the calendar changed from 2025 to 2026 across the United States. Then, last Saturday January 10, 2026 at 10 a.m. Pacific, Another Axiom's planet of apes received an off-world visitor and broke their own record too.

The alien's arrival in Gorilla Tag was preceded by a long build-up of lore that kicked off with the sighting of a green dot visible to everyone in the sky. According to Another Axiom, more than 110,000 people put on their headsets at the same time to witness the green comet collide with the planet, a moment executed as a once-in-a-lifetime live event hosted exclusively in virtual reality. More than 1 million unique users accessed Gorilla Tag in headset from Friday to Sunday, according to Another Axiom.

"Live Events are the modern version of Must See TV," wrote Jake Zim, Another Axiom Chief Marketing Officer.

Virtual worlds are becoming important and reliable destinations for the adults and teens up at midnight partying like it's 2050 in VRChat, and kids gathering a few weeks later to witness a comet in Gorilla Tag as well as countless more dipping in and out of other virtual worlds. As Meta shifts its hiring focus again and institutes another round of layoffs this week, I've put together this piece in hopes of shifting the broader narrative.

These narratives should probably acknowledge some things about VR.

VR Is Science & The Metaverse Is Fiction

VR was around as an idea with "presence" and its relationship to focus studied as a concept for years by researchers before Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook. To put a finer point on it, the metaverse is science fiction and virtual reality is studied in science.

Author Neal Stephenson wrote of the metaverse in Snow Crash while William Gibson wrote of the cyberdeck in Neuromancer and both are impactful works of science fiction today. Meanwhile, in actual real world VR headsets, researchers recently worked out the user interface that would let robots make actual deliveries to a person in headset without disturbing them from their virtual environment.

If VRChat and Gorilla Tag were cities, or public venues, then virtual reality in 2026 is already regularly accommodating roughly 100,000 people per place at one time. They're not all in the same exact room in each locale, but the people who go to these places (usually on the weekend) experience a sense of togetherness something like what other generations in a different century felt spotting Hale-Bopp in the sky together, or singing karaoke and counting down to midnight in a happy room with friends.

"Gorilla Tag itself, and I think the VR ecosystem, is reliant on a low cost headset that is parent-trusted and kid-friendly and sold in the toy aisle," Zim said over a voice call. "The health of the ecosystem is driven by the audience that is spending on the platform, and that audience is the younger audience, the Gorilla Tag audience."

Last weekend, Apple broadcast a whole live Lakers game from some of the first Apple Immersive VR cameras bringing Vision Pro owners closer than courtside seats. Later this week in Walkabout, a new mini golf theme park will release representing the creative output of a couple dozen artistic souls who complete the full loop of VR as an engine of creation. They build courses together in headsets more like chefs in the kitchen than architects making blueprints, even if their output is still architecture.

Former Oculus CTO and technical adviser to Meta John Carmack once sat with a triple monitor setup behind him and explained to VR's biggest believers what might be ahead for Meta's next few years trying to brute force the creation of a metaverse:

"Setting out to build the metaverse is not actually the best way to wind up with the metaverse...the metaverse is a honeypot trap for architecture astronauts," he warned. "Mark Zuckerberg has decided now is the time to build the metaverse....my worry is we could spend years and thousands of people possibly and wind up with things that didn't contribute all that much to the ways that people are actually using the devices and hardware today...we need to concentrate on actual products rather than technology, architecture, or initiatives."

Those interested in sharing anything relevant to VR usage can message 1-949-610-3857 or email ian@uploadvr.com.

Meta is laying off around 10% of its Reality Labs division, specifically targeting VR and Horizon Worlds, The New York Times reports.

Reality Labs, if you're unaware, is the division of Meta behind its Quest headsets, Horizon software, smart glasses, and sEMG wristband, as well as researching future technologies such as Codec Avatars and true AR glasses.

The New York Times estimates Reality Labs at roughly 15,000 staff, suggesting that more than 1500 could be losing their job.

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has scheduled an all-hands meeting for tomorrow, both the NYT and Business Insider claim, describing it as the “most important” of the year.

Meta Confirms “Shifting Some” Funding “From Metaverse Toward AI Glasses”

Meta has officially confirmed “shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables”, following reports of an up to 30% budget cut for parts of Reality Labs.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

The report comes just over a month after Meta officially confirmed "shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables", a statement which itself followed early reports of the cuts from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Insider.

"Within our overall Reality Labs portfolio we are shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables given the momentum there," last month's statement read. "We aren't planning any broader changes than that."

With the layoffs reportedly taking place this week, we'll bring you updates as we learn of Meta staff affected.

Meta CTO: 2025 Will Determine Whether AR/VR Bet Is Visionary Or “A Legendary Misadventure”

In a leaked memo, Meta’s CTO told staff that 2025 will determine whether its hardware & metaverse division is “the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure”.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Meta's funding shift from Horizon Worlds and VR to smart glasses is happening just over a year after a leaked memo from Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told Reality Labs staff that 2025 will determine whether their projects are "the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure".

In the memo, Bosworth described 2025 as "the most critical year in my 8 years at Reality Labs", and told staff they "need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR". Note that at the time, Meta was using MR to refer to VR too, a nomenclature that it ended earlier this year.

"And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance", Bosworth followed that sentence with.

Since then, Reality Labs saw its highest-ever quarterly revenue in Q4 2024 with the launch of Quest 3S, which was the top-selling console on Amazon US for Christmas. But this momentum did not carry through into 2025 at all.

The first two quarters of 2025 saw Quest sales decline year-over-year, revealing that while Quest 3S was a popular stocking stuffer, it simply is not a successful year-round product. While Q3 saw a rebound, Meta explained that this was due to retailers stocking up on Quest 3S for this year's holiday season.

Meanwhile, Meta has continued to push its Horizon Worlds "metaverse" platform with multi-million-dollar creator competitions, especially focused on smartphone-only worlds, as the company hopes to scale the platform from a social VR space to a cross-platform Roblox and Fortnite competitor.

Ray-Ban Meta Sales Have More Than Tripled This Year So Far

Sales of Ray-Ban Meta glasses so far this year have more than tripled compared to the same time last year, more than 200% growth.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

This relative stagnation in Meta's Quest and Horizon Worlds effort is contrasted with skyrocketing sales and significant public and investor interest in its smart glasses.

In multiple earnings calls last year, Meta's partner EssilorLuxottica said that the Ray-Ban Meta glasses were performing "exceptionally well", with sales having more than tripled compared to 2024. Both companies have claimed to be selling many models as fast as they can make them.

Meta has also claimed "unprecedented demand" for its higher-end Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, recently announcing a delay of its international expansion plans to catch up with US production.

UPDATE: UploadVR can confirm that the layoffs include the closure of Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard's Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR).

Meta Closes Deadpool VR, Asgard’s Wrath & Resident Evil 4 VR Studios

Meta has shut down Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR), UploadVR can confirm.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

UPDATE 2: Meta announced that its VR/MR fitness service Supernatural will no longer receive any "new content or feature updates".

Supernatural Will No Longer Receive New Content Or Features

Meta says Supernatural will no longer receive any “new content or feature updates”.

UploadVRIan Hamilton