YouTuber finds only 900 daily users in Horizon Worlds — Meta’s $36B metaverse.

YouTuber Jarvis Johnson encountered less than 1,000 English-speaking users in Mark Zuckerberg’s $36 billion metaverse. The vast majority were under the age of 18. Children rampantly circumvent Zuckerberg’s poorly-enforced age limits and overwhelm gameplay.

Jarvis spent a full week living in Meta’s Horizon Worlds, the most popular metaverse. ‘Most popular’ in this case is certainly less than superlative, with Meta estimating fewer than 200,000 monthly users. Unfortunately, Jarvis’ investigation found that Horizon Worlds has closer to 900 daily users.

Other metaverses are even more sparsely populated. Plots of virtual land in NFT-based worlds have declined 98% or worse, and alternate metaverses barely exist beyond a marketing buzzword.

For adults wanting to interact with others in their age bracket and escape the hundreds of children running rampant throughout Horizon Worlds, enterprising players have engineered elaborate tests of adulthood to grant entry to members-only spaces. One adults-only lounge requires extending one’s avatar arm longer than a child would be able to fluidly extend Meta’s gyroscopic controller.

https://protos.com/youtuber-finds-only-900-daily-users-in-horizon-worlds-metas-36b-metaverse/