Palmer Lackey believes Meta closing its VR game studio is “good for the long-term health of the industry” and believes talk of Meta “abandoning” VR is “patently false”.
In case you somehow missed it: Last week, Meta closed three of the studios it acquired: Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR), and implemented significant layoffs at its fourth studio, Camouflaj (Batman: Arkham Shadow).
The closures are part of Meta’s broader strategy to, in Meta’s own words, “move some of its investments away from the Metaverse and into AI glasses and wearables,” and the job cuts affect about 10% of Meta’s Reality Lab division, or about 1,500 people.
Meta shuts down Deadpool VR, Wrath of Asgard, 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 has confirmed.
This shift in strategy has some in the industry speculating that Meta may abandon VR altogether. But Oculus founder Palmer Lackey disagrees.
In a post on X, Lackey insisted that last week’s events were “not a disaster,” and noted that Meta still employs “about an order of magnitude” more people working in VR than any other company.
Additionally, Lackey explained that it “makes no sense” to “shut out the entire rest of the ecosystem” by forcing third-party developers to compete with upcoming blockbusters like Batman and Deadpool that cost more to produce than they cost to develop, suggesting that an end to this strategy would be “good for the long-term health of the industry.”
He also pointed out that while some of these titles were well-received, others were failures, noting that in 2017, Rock Band VR, an Oculus Rift exclusive, sold just 700 copies.
Palmer Lackey’s full statement is below.
“My opinion on Meta’s firing is contrary to most of the VR industry and much of the media, but it is strong.
This is not a disaster. They still employ the largest team working on VR by about an order of magnitude. No one else is nearby. The “meta is abandoning VR” narrative is clearly false, and strictly numerically speaking, a 10% layoff is essentially 60 days of churn concentrated over a typical 6 month period.
The majority of the 1,500 jobs eliminated at Reality Labs (out of 15,000) were in first-party content roles, which are homegrown games that compete directly with third-party developers. I think this is a good decision. I thought the same thing when I was still at Oculus.
Change always sucks. Because people will lose their jobs in the process. But in a world of limited resources, it makes no sense for metas to give themselves huge subsidies (funding, marketing, recruitment, etc.) at the expense of core technological advancements and platform stability. Much less crowd out the rest of the entire ecosystem. Developers both large and small, even the most efficient, have had a very hard time competing with games developed by meta-owning teams with budgets and teams that spend far more than their revenue potential. People will point out that these teams did a great job and got great reviews from critics and customers alike. Yes, and it’s messed up, but it makes the problem even worse.
Some may say, “Then we should have funded it as an outside studio instead of buying the developer!” Yes, I agree, but hindsight is 20/20. Do you think Oculus expected Rock Band VR to only sell 700 copies, even though they included a guitar adapter with every headset and spent eight figures to make sure the Rift CV1 was ready and great for launch? Of course not, but sometimes you learn the hard way what the world actually wants from you.
TL;DR, I really feel bad for the people affected, but this is good for the long-term health of the industry, especially for continued incentives.
(No one on Meta knows I’m posting this)
Palmer Luckey’s Anduril partners with Meta to develop military XR device
Palmer Luckey’s Anduril is working with Meta to develop XR products for U.S. and allied forces, including the EagleEye AR/VR helmet.
Lackey founded Anduril after he was fired from Oculus by Facebook in 2017. The company manufactures and sells drones, loitering weapons, interceptors, cruise missiles, patrol towers and even unmanned submarines, as well as software systems that integrate these and other assets into a unified view of the battlespace. Its valuation recently exceeded $30 billion.
In 2024, Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth publicly apologized to Luckey, who also publicly accepted the apology. And last year, Anduril and Meta announced a partnership to develop XR products for U.S. and allied forces, starting with the EagleEye AR/VR helmet.
“People who act like I’m an idiot who obviously agrees with everything Meta says need to read a history book or something, JFC
Oculus had a strong internal mandate to build things that built an ecosystem, not Nintendo. It’s good to be back there. ”
In response to the idea that they’re “some idiot who clearly agrees with everything meta does,” Luckey advises people who think that way to read history books.
