Meta Is Closing Down Horizon Workrooms: What It Means for VR Remote Work
Meta is discontinuing Horizon Workrooms on February 16, 2026, marking a significant shift in the company’s metaverse strategy and its commitment to VR productivity tools. The shutdown represents a broader retreat from enterprise-focused virtual reality solutions as Meta realigns its priorities toward artificial intelligence and wearable technology.
The End of an Era for VR Productivity
Horizon Workrooms, which originally launched in 2021, was Meta’s flagship answer to remote work in the post-COVID era. The platform allowed up to 50 total participants to interact in shared virtual spaces, combining up to 16 Quest VR users with remote participants joining via standard video calls. The app was designed to provide context and immersion to collaborative work through virtual meeting rooms and avatar-based interactions.
However, the platform failed to gain significant traction. Meta does not publish specific user figures for Workrooms, though the broader Horizon platform had only 300,000 users in early 2022, suggesting limited adoption for the productivity-focused offering.
Part of a Larger VR Retreat
The discontinuation of Workrooms is not an isolated decision. It’s part of Meta’s sweeping restructuring of its Reality Labs division, which has hemorrhaged over $70 billion since 2021. The company recently laid off more than 1,000 employees from Reality Labs—approximately 10% of the division—and closed three of its acquired VR game studios.
Beyond Workrooms, Meta is also discontinuing Horizon Managed Services, its subscription offering for organizations managing Quest headsets, and will stop selling Quest headsets to business customers effective February 20, 2026. These moves signal Meta’s complete exit from the enterprise VR market.
The Shift Toward Smart Glasses
Meta’s pivot reflects a fundamental strategic change: the company is reallocating investments from metaverse initiatives to wearable technology, particularly AI-powered Ray-Ban smart glasses. This represents a dramatic departure from the vision Mark Zuckerberg articulated when the company rebranded to Meta two years ago.
What’s Next for Remote Work in VR?
Users and organizations relying on Workrooms have until February 16 to download their data. Meta is recommending users migrate to alternative platforms, including Microsoft Teams Immersive, Horizon Store apps like Fluid, or traditional solutions like Zoom and Teams.
The shutdown underscores a broader challenge for VR-based work tools: despite the promise of immersive collaboration, adoption remains limited. Experts suggest that while hybrid work is here to stay, many professionals experience meeting fatigue, and VR meetings may add rather than alleviate this burden—all while requiring expensive hardware.