A senior Meta executive has broken his silence this week on the company's virtual reality future, directly addressing growing concerns that the tech giant might be abandoning its VR ambitions. Dilmer Valecillos, a Developer Advocate at Meta, entered a conversation on social media platform X to provide clarity and reassurance to the worried VR community.
Addressing Community Concerns Head-On
Valecillos responded to VR content creator Matt, who had voiced what many enthusiasts were thinking—that Meta's recent layoffs and prolonged silence were raising serious red flags about the company's commitment to virtual reality. The executive didn't offer vague platitudes but instead delivered a definitive statement: "I can tell you personally that we are not getting out of VR."
His comments carried significant weight as they came during a period of uncertainty for Meta's VR division. The executive revealed he's now working with a team "fully focused on VR programs and education," adding that he wouldn't be dedicating his efforts to this work if he didn't genuinely believe VR had a substantial future at Meta.
Strategic Shifts and Significant Layoffs
The timing of Valecillos' statement is particularly noteworthy. Meta recently implemented substantial workforce reductions, cutting approximately 1,500 employees from Reality Labs—the division responsible for developing VR headsets and metaverse projects. This represents about 10% of the team eliminated in a single sweeping action.
Zuckerberg's AI Pivot and Metaverse Challenges
Meanwhile, CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to be making a strategic pivot, redirecting resources away from metaverse projects and toward AI-powered wearables. Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses have emerged as an unexpected success story, selling over 2 million pairs with such strong demand in the United States that the company postponed its international rollout.
In contrast, the metaverse vision that once drove Meta's rebranding from Facebook in 2021 has struggled to gain traction. Horizon Worlds, the virtual social platform Zuckerberg championed as the future of digital interaction, never surpassed 200,000 monthly active users, with most user-created environments remaining largely empty. Reality Labs has consumed more than $70 billion since 2020 with limited tangible results to show for this massive investment.
The company is now allocating between $70 billion and $72 billion toward AI infrastructure development, with plans to increase this substantial investment further throughout the current year.
VR Studio Closures and Content Strategy Changes
The workforce reductions have impacted Meta's VR operations across multiple fronts. The company has completely shuttered several game development studios, including Armature, Twisted Pixel, and Sanzaru. Additionally, Supernatural—a VR fitness application Meta acquired for $400 million just two years ago—has been moved to maintenance mode, operating with minimal staff and no plans for new content development.
Controversial Perspective on Layoffs
Interestingly, Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus before Meta's acquisition, has defended the recent layoffs. He argues that Meta's internal game studios were actually harming the broader VR ecosystem by crowding out independent developers with heavily subsidized titles. Luckey frames these cuts as a return to Oculus's original strategy of supporting third-party creators rather than competing directly with them.
Despite these significant organizational changes and strategic shifts, Meta has not issued any formal statement clarifying what these developments mean for Quest headset development or the future of VR programming at the company. Valecillos' personal intervention on social media remains the most direct communication about Meta's VR intentions during this transitional period.
