Meta has released a new “ad” for its flagship virtual reality app, Horizon Worlds — and it’s so much worse than anyone could have predicted.
The 44-second clip Meta shared on Instagram over the weekend shows misshapen avatar characters sitting in a circle of chairs while discussing their breakups (because of Valentine’s Day, apparently?)
And given the more than $60 billion the company’s Reality Labs has wasted on the project since 2020, the result is astonishingly bad. It looks more like a middle schooler’s 3D animation project, with bizarrely proportioned low-poly avatars awkwardly mimicking the movements of real-life users. Their forearms in particular seem to be completely detached, awkwardly dangling from the avatars’ elbows due to the limitations of Meta’s Quest controllers.
The ad appears to have generated enough ridicule online that the company has deleted it from Instagram. (Futurism has reached out to Meta for clarification.)
It’s difficult not to see the latest gaff as yet another black eye in the company’s efforts to justify the existence of its pitiful metaverse. Despite billions of dollars spent, its best efforts still look completely embarrassing.
Will one of the tech reporters following me please investigate how this Meta Horizon promo video happened. It’s one of the key artifacts of our time and we need the full story pic.twitter.com/LZCZQpr6gP
— Brooks Otterlake (@i_zzzzzz) February 16, 2025
Even the voice acting and script are unintentionally mortifying.
“My ex broke up with me via text using emojis,” one avatar says in the video while waving his arms around. “I got a broken heart, a crying face, and a thumbs up.”
Besides the atrocious graphics, the whole vibe is just off.
“Meta has a fundamental misunderstanding of how people want to be represented in virtual worlds,” one user on X-formerly-Twitter wrote. “No one wants to be a boring human in the metaverse when the possibilities are infinite. Who is advising these people?“
It’s a terrible showing for the trillion-dollar tech company. Earlier this year, Zuckerberg promised a “pivotal year for the metaverse.” But given its latest ad, the company has made astonishingly little progress over the last three years.
Remember that cringe “selfie” Zuckerberg showed off in 2022 of himself blankly staring into the camera with some low-effort 3D renditions of the Eiffel Tower and the Sagrada Familia behind him?
Despite $70 billion in losses over the past three years, Meta’s metaverse remains a hellscape filled with screeching underage children, distinctly void of the vibrant and life-filled virtual worlds the company initially showed off during the unveiling of Horizon Worlds.
Exactly what’s going on behind the scenes is a fascinating question. Did Meta allow the project to atrophy while it doubled down on its AI investments instead?
In short, how did things get this bad? Other videos shared by Meta’s Horizon showing in-game footage paint an even more damning picture of the current state of the tech, with rudimentary avatars juddering through uninspired and largely empty virtual worlds.
During the company’s Q4 earnings call in January, Zuckerberg remained adamant that his massive bet on the metaverse would eventually pay off.
“The number of people using Quest and Horizon has been steadily growing, and this is a year when a number of the long-term investments that we’ve been working on that will make the metaverse more visually stunning and inspiring will really start to land,” he told investors.
But when the metaverse will live up to those lofty promises remains unclear at best. In its current state, it’s a startlingly terrible experience that leaves a lot to be desired.
More on the metaverse: The Metaverse Is Completely Falling Apart
