Overview
- The Snow Crash author published a new Substack essay reversing his past support for AR and VR gear and saying there is no business case for headsets.
- He argued people do not trust face-worn devices and called smart glasses and goggles creepy because bystanders cannot tell if they are being watched or recorded.
- He said the real metaverse already exists in online games, citing Fortnite with about 650 million registered players, Roblox with roughly 380 million monthly users, and Minecraft with around 60 million.
- He warned developers that small headset markets and frequent platform shutdowns remove financial incentives and can erase years of work when servers go dark.
- He pointed to Meta’s pullback after spending tens of billions of dollars, including changes to Horizon Worlds’ VR access and a $19.1 billion Reality Labs loss in 2025, and he backed a software-first path with small teams using tools like Epic’s Verse.