Things don't look great for virtual reality. Once seen as the future of online interaction, the present has caught up to VR, and it's brutal: Meta is by far the biggest dog in the virtual reality kennel, and its virtual reality division, Reality Labs, lost over $73 billion since it launched five years ago, leading the company to pull some resources from VR to focus on smart glasses and AI. Apple, seen as the runner-up in the VR market, shipped only 45,000 Vision Pro headsets in the final quarter of 2025, a rounding error compared to the 82.6 million iPhones Apple sold in the same period.
In the cold light of the ledger, virtual reality looks like shambling corpse, too dumb to know it’s dead. But they said the same thing about video games in 1983—Atari’s death looked like the end of the road, but then the NES came out.
Zuckerberg’s sales pitch of a billion people living in a frictionless, legless, gravity-free vacuum of suburban-techno-capitalism might be gone—it turns out we didn’t want another world full of random people—but what’s growing in its place is a bottom-up community built by filmmakers, game developers, and regular people, all creating a new way to belong.
Virtual reality filmmaking is an exciting new avenue
According to Celia, experiencing films in VR frees the viewer from distractions that mar other ways of watching—your phone’s bright screen isn't going to pull your attention, and you literally don't have visible surroundings to distract you. “When you make the conscious choice to put on a headset, to watch a piece of content and engage with it, it's actually transformative, almost meditative," Celia said.
More than just a new way to show old movies, immersive film is a new medium being born; filmmakers are inventing a new language. Whether it’s in a you-are-there, 360-degree view of Steve Martin’s SNL monologue, narrative VR series like Eli Roth's The Faceless Lady, or interactive documentary experiences like D-Day: The Camera Soldier, artists are using virtual reality to tell stories in a completely new way. “We're all obsessed with this idea that we can live and breathe into a story,” Celia said, “That is what's driving us all to create these more and more immersive and impressive and impactful experiences.”
Gaming in virtual reality is still great, too
Virtual Reality game studio Resolution Games seems to have cracked the code. The company has grown consistently since it started up in 2015, selling millions of games despite a challenging environment, with its flagship title Demeo earning critical raves and a partnership with Wizards of the Coast on Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked.
No matter how prudent the management, no game studio survives if the games aren’t good, and Resolution’s games are very good, often in ways that seem counter-intuitive to what we thought VR games would be. “A big grand virtual world, like Cyberpunk or Grand Theft Auto, but you’re inside it... now we know in reality, that's not a very comfortable experience, unfortunately,” Palms said.
I checked in on Meta's Horizon Worlds, and it feels dead
Speaking of friends, if Mark Zuckerberg’s original vision of the Metaverse was about anything, it was about bringing people together. “Feeling truly present with another person is the ultimate dream of social technology. That is why we are focused on building this,” Zuckerberg wrote in his Founder’s Letter in 2021.
Horizon Worlds, circa 2026, feels dead. But dead in a unique way. Tens of thousands of “worlds” have been created by both users and corporations, and they're shiny, bright, and open to explore, but not many people seem interested. Randomly picking worlds is like walking around in an abandoned mall—stuff, but no people. If you're into "liminal spaces," you will never run out. Still, like the headsets it's played on, Horizon Worlds is really good.
Take The Office World, an official recreation of The Office's Dunder Mifflin, right down to the desktop tchotchkes. You can walk into Michael Scott’s office and pull games up on his computer, sort mail for Schrute Bucks, or go downstairs to check out the warehouse. The Office World is filled with the kind of cleverly written fan-service details that should draw droves of The Office faithful to hang out and meet each other. But they don’t. During the half hour I spent in The Office World at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday, the population count never got above five people. It's lonely in there, like a water cooler with no co-workers around it or an empty film set with no one there to call “action.”
Doesn't this looks "fun?" Credit: Stephen JohnsonI had a similar experience at Blumhouse Horrorverse, an atmospheric, shadowy forest clearing surrounded by spooky buildings. It's filled with things to see and do for fans of Blumhouse properties like M3GAN, The Purge, and The Black Phone. You can play a game where you’re locked in a mansion with a player-controlled villain, or search for hidden Easter eggs to unlock M3GAN’s signature dress for your avatar. But the woods were so quiet. The few people I encountered were either very young children—the "squeakers" that haunt every corner of Horizon Worlds—or first-timers who wandered around in silence before vanishing like ghosts.
Liminal, right? Credit: Stephen JohnsonBut I found signs of life in the digital ruins
I was about to call quits on my virtual safari, but I thought I'd check out one last world. A search for "over 18" (damn squeakers) brought up The Soapstone Comedy Club. I'm glad I visited. The spot is alive. There's a full schedule of upcoming stand-up shows, trivia, improv, and karaoke—and more importantly, there are people hanging out. Upon logging in, a friendly volunteer introduced herself, and before long I was chopping it up about life, online and off, with a bunch of new pals on the patio of a virtual comedy club.
Check my new computer friends. Credit: Stephen JohnsonIn recovery and unemployed, Sorrels watched that now-infamous Facebook Connect event in 2021 that launched the Metaverse, and rather than clowning on it because the avatars didn't have legs, Sorrel was inspired. "It sounds almost hokey," Sorrels said, "but I heard about the Metaverse, specifically Horizon Worlds, and I was like, 'I got to get in there.'"
"In the Soapstone, I can host shows, step on stage, or instantly connect with friends and family members who live thousands of miles away as if they were right here in the same room," explained Soapstone Community Lead LollyDee. "It’s especially meaningful for people with anxiety, physical limitations, or those who live far from social hubs. For many of them, Soapstone Comedy isn’t just entertainment, it’s their social space and sense of community."
So, is virtual reality dead?
The loud, anarchic vibe of VRChat is too much for me, but about 40,000 (mostly young) people use it to connect every day. Big Screen has a healthy user base of VR cinephiles checking out 2D and 3D movies. People are virtually beating each other up 24/7 in Thrill of the Fight 2. I could go on, but you get the picture: VR might not have broken big, but specialized communities are thriving in all corners of the metaverse.
In 2026, the "Next Chapter of the Internet" version of the Metaverse, where we would all would live, work, and buy digital sneakers, is something of a ghost town. But a more sustainable, organic space is taking root. VR isn't a second world; it’s a group of specialized tools for specific passions—a private IMAX theater for the cinephile, a global open-mic night for would-be comedians, a tactical tabletop for D&D nerds. VR isn't everything to everyone, but it's something to someone, and there's nothing more alive than that.
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