Last Monday, Mark Zuckerberg announced via Facebook that Meta would launch Horizon Worlds, the company’s social metaverse platform, in France and Spain. But the announcement was laden with controversy: the images that emerged showed a metaverse dangerous enough to come from a tech company billionaire.

The Facebook post was accompanied by an image of Zuckerberg’s avatar, with pale eyes, without any lighting, which looked like a screenshot taken from a video game 20 years ago. For this, Zuckerberg came out to answer the criticism.

In the background are two models of the Eiffel Tower and the Basilica of Tibidabo Cathedral which are so basic that no one can believe them. Images are trending “Second Life” for a while on Twitter, with people saying that it somehow looks “worse than the Sims games from decades ago.”

To make matters worse, Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement made his metaverse even more exposed by coinciding with the same day that Fortnite presented its special event. Dragonball Z, strengthen the concept version which is much more fun and interesting.

Faced with this backlash, Zuckerberg came out to respond. This Friday, he shared an update on Horizon Worlds complete with a new version of his avatar and ancient Roman-style environmental renderings. In the post, he admitted, “The photo I posted earlier on this week is pretty basic: It was taken very quickly to celebrate the launch.”

In these photos, it looks even better. There was lighting this time, and the avatar’s face had a real expression. What’s curious is the similarity of the new photos to the Fortnite art.

Horizon Worlds, Facebook metaverse

Horizon Worlds is one of the worst looking offerings, especially when you consider that Meta spends something like 10 billion dollars pursuing its Horizon, a VR-focused version of the metaverse, even embarrassingly changed its company name to reflect that.

The app, which has been available to users in an invite-only closed beta since 2020, opened its services in the US and Canada last December and following this release by opening its platform to customers in the UK, Ireland and Iceland this year.

It is accessed using a Quest VR headset. Despite the criticism, growing into 300,000 users in the first two months following its December 2021 launch, and in February, the Horizon Worlds Twitter account posted that more than 10,000 worlds had been created, although Meta didn’t explain how it plans to moderate the platform, one of the biggest common problems.

Meta is currently expanding its Horizon Worlds offering, even bringing it to mobile. Horizon Worlds also released “world shopping” for a “few” of creators, which would make it more like Roblox.

Anyway, from criticism and viralization, the Facebook Metaverse goes have more and more publicity. But what they don’t seem to have are interested users.

Memes and criticism for the Zuckerberg metaverse

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