Meta Shocks VR World With Deep Cuts as Hype and Losses Collide

At a Glance

Meta laid off over 100 employees across virtual reality teams despite continued investments in metaverse vision.
Reality Labs division lost $5 billion in Q4 2024 while generating only $1 billion in sales.
Supernatural users will receive fewer workouts weekly, reflecting service reductions following the cuts.
Meta has eliminated more than 20,000 jobs since 2022, with VR teams now facing significant restructuring.
Cuts signal financial limits to Meta’s VR ambitions and a shift toward mixed reality experiences.

While Meta’s Reality Labs division has been pouring billions into the metaverse dream, the company shocked the VR community last week with widespread layoffs affecting over 100 employees across its virtual reality teams.

The April 24th cuts hit particularly hard at Oculus Studios, which makes games for Meta’s Quest headsets, and even affected popular apps like Supernatural, the VR workout program Meta acquired back in 2023.

Meta’s Quest VR dream takes a hit as layoffs slash through Oculus Studios and popular apps like Supernatural.

Talk about awkward timing! These layoffs came right before Meta’s first quarter earnings report, and it’s not hard to see why they might be tightening the belt. The restructuring is specifically aimed at helping Meta develop future mixed reality experiences more efficiently.

Reality Labs lost a staggering $5 billion in the last quarter of 2024 alone, while only bringing in about $1 billion in sales. Yikes!

Even more mind-boggling, the company has admitted that Reality Labs was bleeding over $1 billion every month for most of the previous two years. That’s the kind of money that makes even tech giants sweat.

The cuts have real-world consequences for VR users, too. Supernatural fans will see fewer new workouts each week, though the company promises each workout will now come in multiple difficulty levels instead of just one.

The coaches who lead the workouts are staying put, at least.

Meta claims these changes will help teams “work more efficiently on future mixed reality experiences,” but it’s hard not to see this as a reality check for their metaverse ambitions. The company faces mounting pressure to address privacy concerns related to user data collection in their VR platforms.

This isn’t Meta’s first rodeo with layoffs either – they cut 5% of their global workforce (about 3,600 employees) just two months ago in February 2025, and have eliminated more than 20,000 jobs since 2022.

For the laid-off VR developers, there’s a small silver lining – they can apply for other positions within Meta. But for the rest of us watching from the sidelines, it’s a clear sign that even Meta’s seemingly limitless enthusiasm for virtual reality has its financial limits.

The restructuring follows the closure of Lone Echo developer Ready at Dawn at the end of last year, showing a pattern of contraction in Meta’s VR development efforts.

At a Glance

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