The sprawling, nebulous 'Metaverse' has been completely abandoned by its parent company, Meta, only a few years after its initial inception. Unsurprisingly, "VR Chat but with capitalism" simply wasn't an appealing pitch for the vast majority of consumers, and the companies that did make a bet on their own virtual space found them expensive, far too niche, and ultimately inferior to a traditional, flat website in every way – not to mention the layoffs that resulted once they realized this. I still have yet to see a single cogent definition of what CEOs even think the Metaverse is, and that includes from its progenitor Mark Zuckerberg. In the end, it seems that VR will remain, in large part, just another platform for games. Zuckerberg and his ilk have already begun chasing the next expensive trend: AI, naturally. Pour one out for the Metaverse… or don't.
And we never even got our legs!