{"id":1234302,"date":"2025-02-20T16:00:30","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T21:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1234302"},"modified":"2025-02-20T16:00:30","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T21:00:30","slug":"meta-announces-50m-horizon-worlds-content-fund-as-some-vr-studios-struggle-to-make-ends-meet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1234302","title":{"rendered":"Meta Announces $50M \u2018Horizon Worlds\u2019 Content Fund as Some VR Studios Struggle to Make Ends Meet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Meta today announced a $50 million fund to incentivize the creation of new and improved content in Horizon Worlds<\/em>, the company\u2019s first-party social gaming platform. The move comes as many seasoned studios that build self-contained VR apps for the Quest platform are struggling to sustain themselves due to what Meta says is a shifting demographic of headset users.<\/p>\n

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Since the launch of Oculus Rift CV1 in 2016, self-contained VR apps have been the lifeblood of Meta\u2019s VR platforms, and the primary driver of a growing audience of users over the years. And while these self-contained games and apps still largely define Meta\u2019s XR platform, the company has come to believe that an all-encompassing \u2018metaverse\u2019 of connected experiences is the key to its success.<\/p>\n

Horizon Worlds<\/em> is Meta\u2019s attempt at building the \u2018metaverse\u2019, where the platform serves as both a destination for playing and for building. Creators can build content inside of Horizon Worlds<\/em> itself, then publish that content to the rest of the Horizon\u00a0Worlds<\/em> community. It\u2019s all social by default, a critical element for one of the world\u2019s largest social media companies.<\/p>\n

But with Horizon\u00a0Worlds <\/em>available in\u00a0VR for several years but not achieving\u00a0a critical mass of users that could satisfy Meta\u2019s desire for scale, the company eventually opened up Horizon Worlds<\/em> to flatscreen devices like phones and computers with the goal of bringing more people onto the platform. While this invites a larger audience, it also makes the job of creators harder, given the challenge of satisfying the unique affordances of VR vs. those of flatscreen platforms<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Image courtesy Meta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And of course, one of the big hurdles to getting people using and returning to Horizon Worlds<\/em> is straightforward: content. If there isn\u2019t fun things to do with strong replayability, why would anyone keep coming back, let alone check out Horizon Worlds<\/em> in the first place?<\/p>\n

Meta has made some strides on content by attracting more and more creators to build for the platform and creating\u00a0some of its own first-party games inside of Horizon Worlds<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now the company is making another big bet to incentivize creators to build on Horizon Worlds<\/em>; today it announced\u00a0a $50 million \u2018Creator Fund\u2019<\/a>\u00a0that will pay out to creators of worlds that drive high visits and retention.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach month, we\u2019ll pay out bonuses from the Creator Fund to the makers of fun and engaging mobile and MR worlds. Bonuses will be tied to worlds\u2019 contributions to the overall ecosystem across time spent, retention, and in-world purchases, so there are a variety of different ways for creators to maximize their earnings,\u201d the company said in its announcement.<\/p>\n

The fund comes alongside a new development tool, the Horizon Worlds<\/em> desktop editor<\/a>, which allows creators to build more extensive projects with the speed and power of their computer, rather than being inside a headset. It\u2019s closer to the workflow of existing self-contained VR app developers, who generally build their apps using a game engine like Unity.<\/p>\n

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Image courtesy Meta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The move is in line with Meta\u2019s\u00a0growing conviction that Horizon Worlds<\/em> is essential to its success in this space. Whether VR or not, Meta wants to build its own version of Fortnite<\/em>\u2014a social gaming platform with massive reach and retention.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s CTO recently told the teams working on XR and Horizon<\/a> that the\u00a0mobile<\/em> version of\u00a0Horizon Worlds<\/em>\u00a0\u201cabsolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the new $50 million\u00a0creator fund is certainly a boon for creators who believe in Meta\u2019s vision for Horizon Worlds<\/em>, it comes at a tough time for developers of the self-contained VR and MR apps that have kept Meta\u2019s headsets relevant.<\/p>\n

The fund is the exclamation mark on the last two years which saw Meta pivot its VR platform to focus much more on Horizon Worlds<\/em>. The company drastically reorganized its headset interface<\/a> and mobile companion app\u2014and even renamed them to reflect their new focus\u2014to put\u00a0Horizon Worlds<\/em> content in front of more users. In some cases this meant pushing high-quality self-contained apps further from view, sometimes in favor of amatuer content of little value, or \u2018cloned\u2019 content that aims to recreate the gameplay of a successful self-contained VR app inside of Horizon Worlds<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A widespread feeling among those third-party developers at the moment is that these changes have significantly harmed their businesses, which rely on sales of their apps to continue supporting existing content and to create new content. The feeling is that Meta is funneling customers away from their apps and onto its own sub-platform (where Meta takes an even more aggressive cut of creator revenue<\/a>).<\/p>\n

A growing list of longstanding studios that have built well received self-contained VR apps have been made significant<\/a><\/span> cuts<\/a><\/span> to staff<\/a><\/span> and footprint<\/a><\/span>, citing the dual challenges of sluggish performance on Meta\u2019s Quest platform and broader distress in the overall gaming industry. Meta even closed one of its own studios that was focused on high-production self-contained VR games<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that Meta hasn\u2019t invested in developers of self-contained VR games & apps over the years.<\/p>\n

The company has disbursed hundreds of millions of dollars<\/a> for the purpose of building alluring VR content, and has aimed to accelerate small indie developers with programs like Oculus Start.<\/p>\n

Last year the company created a \u201cmulti-million dollar\u201d fund to incentivize new studios to try their hand at creating MR content for Quest<\/a>, and a similar fund aimed at developers building \u2018lifestyle\u2019 apps<\/a> for Quest headsets.<\/p>\n

However, many developers are left with a feeling that even if they have found a sustainable audience for now, Meta\u2019s shifting focus\u2014whether from VR to MR, or MR to Horizon Worlds<\/em>\u2014makes the Quest platform a volatile and risky place to do business.<\/p>\n

For its part, Meta counters that the fading fortunes of some self-contained VR app developers is due not to frequent pivots, but to a demographic shift of Quest users<\/a> which has seen growing demand for free-to-play apps over paid apps<\/p>\n

And indeed, there\u2019s probably some truth to that. Despite being \u2018free to play\u2019,\u00a0Gorilla Tag<\/em> has become one of VR\u2019s most successful titles ever, reeling in more than $100 million in revenue through in-app purchases<\/a>. The studio credits its free-to-play model as a major factor in that success, with the low barrier to entry helping to achieve a critical mass of player population.<\/p>\n

Other VR apps building on the free-to-play model are also seeing positive signs of momentum, like Digigods<\/em>, which recently raised $2.6 million in funding to expand<\/a>\u00a0thanks for strong growth from players responding to social, free-to-play, and user-generated content.<\/p>\n

Meta maintains that paid VR apps will continue to be important to its Horizon platform. The company says it\u2019s continuing existing its usual funding activities for self-contained VR content (though recent reports contest that notion<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The post Meta Announces $50M \u2018Horizon Worlds\u2019 Content Fund as Some VR Studios Struggle to Make Ends Meet<\/a> appeared first on Road to VR<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meta today announced a $50 million fund to incentivize the creation of new and improved content in Horizon Worlds, the company\u2019s first-party social gaming platform. The move comes as many seasoned studios that build self-contained VR apps for the Quest … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,110,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1234302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-unfiltered-rss","category-vr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1234302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1234302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1234302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1234302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}