A fresh round of job cuts at Meta has reignited debate around the future of virtual reality, even as one of the company’s earliest VR pioneers publicly supports the move.
Meta has announced new layoffs in its Reality Labs division, trimming more than 1,000 roles as it looks to reduce heavy spending on virtual reality and redirect resources toward AI-powered wearables. The move comes amid broader restructuring, with the division employing around 15,000 people in total.
The decision has drawn criticism, with some observers suggesting Meta is retreating from its ambitious metaverse plans. However, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, who was once fired by the company, has defended the layoffs, calling them necessary for the long-term health of the VR ecosystem.
In a detailed post on X, Luckey said the reaction to the job cuts was overblown. “This is not a disaster. They still employ the largest team working on VR by about an order of magnitude. Nobody else is even close. The ‘Meta is abandoning VR’ narrative is obviously false. A 10% layoff is basically six months of normal churn concentrated into 60 days, strictly numbers-wise,” he wrote.
Luckey acknowledged the shock caused by the cuts but argued they do not weaken Meta’s dominant position in VR development. He noted that most of the roughly 1,500 roles eliminated were linked to first-party content teams that developed games competing directly with independent developers.
“Crowding out the rest of the ecosystem makes even less sense. Every developer, big and small—even the hyper-efficient ones—has had an extremely hard time competing with games developed by Meta-owned teams with budgets that vastly exceed their earning potential,” he said.
Luckey was a central figure in Meta’s early VR push but was fired in March 2017, when the company was still known as Facebook, following controversy linked to his political donations. While Meta denied political motives at the time, the episode remained contentious for years. As of 2026, Luckey and Meta have since reconciled and are working together on military technology projects.
The latest layoffs were communicated internally by Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth, according to a report. Alongside the cuts, Meta is scaling back some VR investments to improve sustainability while shifting focus toward AI-driven wearables and mobile-first experiences. The company is also expanding its push into AI hardware, including discussions with EssilorLuxottica to grow smart glasses production.
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