Most metaverse users leave after a month, according to leaked Meta report

Users of Meta’s Horizon World’s virtual reality platform are not returning to it, with the number of people going back into the software on a steady decline, internal documents reportedly say.

Meta set a goal of 500,000 monthly active users for Horizon Worlds, where people can explore worlds created by other players that include shopping, recreation, and entertainment venues, but has achieved less than 200,000, the documents show, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Only nine per cent of worlds built by creators are ever visited by more than 50 people, the documents say. “An empty world is a sad world,” one notes. Most visitors to Horizon generally do not return to the app after the first month, it reportedly says.

Users apparently had difficulty finding areas they enjoyed, while others complained that “people do not look real” and that the avatars lack legs.

Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Meta, revealed his new full metaverse avatar with legs for the first time at the company’s Connect event this month.

“Legs are hard, which is why other virtual reality systems don’t have them either,” he said at the event.

Meta quietly paused new features on the platform until it has improved the user experience but had planned to launch a version of Horizon for mobile devices and computers later this year.

Dare Obasanjo, lead product manager for Horizon and the metaverse platform, reportedly wrote in a memo that it was unclear where the metaverse fits in the investment framework,“ and that the company was “overdue for a reassessment of how we invest and allocate resources.”

However, Meta believes it can bring people back to the platform. “Many say they would return if pain points are fixed,” read one memo, while another said that creators “have a desire to work full time in the metaverse,” and that “if there were full-time roles with the right compensation, some creators would make building the metaverse their full-time day job.”

Meta recently launched a new virtual reality headset called the Quest Pro, costing £1,499. While it is almost four times the price of Meta’s current headset, it has facial expression sensors and self-tracking controllers.

Meta did not respond to The Independent’s request for comment before time of publication, but a spokesperson told the Journal that metaverse was a multi-year project and Meta believes it is the future of computing.