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2023: Meta pays metaverse project developers twice market
In early April 2023, it became known that the salary of the developers of Meta (recognized in Russia as an extremist organization; activities on the territory of the Russian Federation are prohibited), which specialize in virtual reality (VR) technologies, can double the market average.
According to The Washington Post, we are talking about the implementation of various projects related to the concept of the metaverse. Programmers capable of creating games and applications based on VR can receive from Meta from $600 thousand to $1 million per year. Market participants say this is at least double the salary offered to their employees by major gaming studios. It is also noted that Apple pays its most qualified specialists an average of $495 thousand per year, while VR developers at Google receive approximately $440 thousand.
Former employees of Meta's human resources department note that the unusually high salaries of developers creating products for the metaverse are explained by the company's desire to "surpass competitors." The platform is willing to pay twice as much as other industry participants in order to attract the best programmers to its staff.
Meta is also investing in research aimed at improving the technical part of its platform to offer users a "more realistic sense of presence in the metaverse." The company bought at least seven VR studios in order to expand the range of applications in the relevant area. At the same time, Meta admits that it will take it years to form a full-fledged ecosystem within the metaverse model. Zuckerberg's company is forced to create products that others do not, as the virtual reality market expands and competition intensifies.
Meta employees said they were concerned about how Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is "obsessed" with the metaverse: the company attracted more and more specialists to it, but did not develop a unified development strategy.[1]
2022
The metaverse did not attract half of the expected users either
On October 15, 2022, it became known that Meta Platforms (recognized as an extremist organization; activities in Russia are prohibited) is experiencing serious difficulties with attracting users to its metaverse Horizon Worlds.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta conceived Horizon Worlds as a set of virtual worlds in which users can interact with each other, shop, work and have fun through their avatars. However, the data provided in the internal documents of the company indicate that the project did not meet expectations.
By the end of 2022, Meta hoped to attract up to 500 thousand active users to the metaverse. Subsequently, the bar was reduced to 280 thousand people. But in fact, the audience of the interactive platform is less than 200 thousand subscribers. Moreover, many users leave Horizon Worlds after the first month and never return.
The metaverse has faced a number of challenges. These are technical difficulties, flaws (for example, avatars have no legs), empty worlds, the impossibility of full interaction (in interests) with other subscribers, etc. To immerse in Horizon Worlds, you need a Quest 2 headset costing from $400, and therefore the platform is not available to most ordinary users. In addition, statistics show that more than half of Quest 2 owners stop using the device six months after purchase.
The financial side of the project also raises many questions. Since the beginning of 2021, Meta has invested approximately $15 billion in the Reality Labs division, which is also engaged in the development of the metaverse. But where exactly these funds went is not clear. Even the company's employees themselves say that there is a "quality problem" with Horizon Worlds. In such a situation, investors inevitably have questions about the feasibility of the project.[2][3]
Zuckerberg posts selfie from his $10 billion metaverse
On August 17, 2022, Mark Zuckerberg published a VR selfie from the Horizon Worlds metaverse, in the development of which $10 billion was invested. The selfie showed the Eiffel Tower and was supposed to announce that its metaverse was expanding into new countries. Instead, however, people immediately began to condemn the botched photo.
The Internet instantly reacted, ridiculing what many users previously regarded as preliminary graphics for the enterprise, to which Meta (recognized as extremist and banned in Russia) planned to spend at least $10 billion in 2021 on Facebook Reality Labs, allocating significant resources for augmented and virtual reality products and services in the results of the third quarter of 2021.
Many compared the design of Metaverse to the graphics of the early 90s and noted how lifeless and unrealistic Zuckerberg selfies look. This selfie quickly acquired the designation "dead eyes."
New York Times columnist Kevin Roose on Twitter compared the graphics to "worse than the games on the 2008 Nintendo Wii." The Slate edition used the term "buttcheeks" when describing selfies. Other users on Twitter also criticised the selfie, calling it a "terrible picture," an "ugly avatar of the level of the 2005 game."
Because of this, the hashtag Second Life has become a trend on Twitter. Users began to write that Zuckerberg's selfie looks worse than the eponymous simulator game of a decade ago.
The fact that Fortnite introduced its crossover with Dragon Ball Z on the same day also played against the founder of Meta. And its concept visually looks like a more attractive version than the metaverse created by Meta.
Part of the reason that these avatars and worlds look very simplified against the background of modern video games lies in the limitations of Quest 2 VR hardware and Meta's desire to create VR content that can work on as many devices as possible. However, the publication of such a selfie, according to many media outlets, has become a powerful anti-advertising project.[4]
2021
Meta employee complained about harassment in the metaverse
In mid-December 2021, beta tester Horizon Worlds complained of harassment metauniverse Meta due to the fact that a stranger screwed up her avatar. An employee wrote about the incident in a testing group on Facebook.
An internal analysis of the incident by Meta found that the beta tester had to use a tool called, a safe zone, which is part of a set of security features built into Horizon Worlds. This is a kind of protective bubble tool that users can activate when they feel threatened. Inside it, no one can touch user avatars, talk to them, or interact in any way until the user signals.
 | This is good feedback for us because I want to make the function, the safe zone, trivially simple and accessible to everyone. This incident is absolutely unfortunate for us. We will continue to improve our user interface and better understand how people use our tools so that users can easily and reliably report what is happening. Our goal is to make Horizon Worlds safe and we are committed to this work, "said Horizon Worlds Vice President Vivek Sharma. |  |
This is not the first time that a user is pawed in virtual reality (VR) and, unfortunately, not the last. But this incident shows that until companies figure out how to protect members, the metaverse will never be a safe place.
Internet harassment research specialist Catherine Cross says that when virtual reality is exciting and real, the toxic behavior that happens in this environment is also real. This was true in the case of a woman who was pawed at Horizon Worlds. Sexual harassment is not a joke on the regular internet, but being in VR adds another layer that makes the event more intense. Harassment in VR is not new, and you shouldn't expect a world in which these problems completely disappear to become real. While there are people who hide behind the screens of their computers to avoid moral responsibility.
Meta representatives claim to provide users with access to tools to ensure their own security, effectively shifting responsibility to them. Before joining Horizon Worlds, users must complete a training process in which participants learn how to run the feature, a safe zone.
Until we find out whose job it is to protect users, one of the main steps towards a safer virtual world is to discipline aggressors who often go unpunished and retain the right to participate in the network even after their behavior becomes known. There is no authority that is unequivocally responsible for the rights and safety of those who participate anywhere on the network, let alone VR worlds. Until something changes in this area, the metaverse will remain a dangerous, problematic space.[5]
Access to users in the United States and Canada
On December 9, 2021, Meta announced it was opening access to the Horizon Worlds social platform. The service is a virtual space where people interact by controlling three-dimensional avatars. Users in the US and Canada over the age of 18 will be able to access the free Quest app uninvited.
Horizon Worlds is Meta's first attempt to release something reminiscent of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse vision. The service is an extensive multiplayer platform that combines Roblox and the virtual world of OASIS from the film - the First Player to get ready. The platform was originally called Horizon and required a Facebook account, allowing the user to communicate with 20 people at a time in a virtual space. Since 2020, the social platform has been available in beta to individual owners of virtual reality helmets Oculus VR.
A key part of Horizon Worlds is the ability to write basic code that sets the rules for how objects work, for example, a gun fires when you pull the trigger or the ball bounces when you contact the surface. The code, which Meta calls script blocks, acts similarly to layers in Photoshop, allowing rules to be chained together to create complex interactions, such as a leaderboard that is automatically updated once the game is complete. Meta employees created script blocks at the request of beta testers, and that the company ultimately plans to release a free library of such blocks. The object library will also be released. For December 2021, coding of script blocks takes place entirely in virtual reality, but over time Meta plans to allow them to be created from a personal computer.
There is no way to make money in Horizon Worlds until the end of 2021, but in the future it is planned to link the service with Horizon Venues, an autonomous application for holding large events in virtual reality, and Horizon Workrooms, software for working together in virtual reality. Meta representatives hope that until monetization is added, users will be attracted to the platform in the peaceful construction of the Horizon Worlds world.[6]
Facebook began to build a metaverse and hires 10 thousand developers
In mid-October 2021, Facebook announced that it had begun building a metaverse and was hiring 10,000 developers in Europe. The implementation of this project will last several years.
Facebook will attract specialists in Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Holland. A Facebook spokesman clarified that the UK is not included in the list of countries for finding and hiring staff.
In July 2021, the founder and head of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg began to actively promote the metaverse as a vision of the future of the company and everything Internet in general, where users will not just enter the company's platforms, but live, work and play inside its digital world. The fact that Facebook is recruiting a metaverse development team, which will become part of Facebook Reality Labs, which deals with virtual () VR and () projects augmented realities AR , was announced at the end of July 2021 by Facebook Vice President Andrew Bosworth, responsible for AR and VR technologies.
According to him, by October 18, 2021, Portal and Oculus devices can teleport the user to a room with another person, regardless of physical distance, or to new virtual worlds. But for Facebook to fully see the metaverse, you need to build connective tissue between these spaces so that users can remove the limitations of physics and move between them with the same ease as moving from one room to another.
The company noted that Facebook hopes to work with EU governments to find talented developers to implement this ambitious initiative, as part of an upcoming recruitment campaign across the region. Facebook executives said in a blog post that the initiative is a vote of confidence in the European tech sector and that they want to see the completion of the creation of a single digital market and the creation of stability in international data flows.[7]
See also
Notes
- ↑ Meta paid VR developers salaries of up to $1 million. Facebook’s owner is now in financial trouble.
- ↑ [1] Company Documents Show Meta’s Flagship Metaverse Falling Short Meta has burned $15 billion trying to build the metaverse — and nobody's saying exactly where the money went
- ↑ [2]
- ↑ Mark Zuckerberg spent $10B on the metaverse and all he got was this stupid selfie
- ↑ The metaverse has a groping problem already
- ↑ Meta opens up access to its VR social platform Horizon Worlds
- ↑ Facebook Is Creating 10,000 Jobs in EU to Help Develop a Metaverse
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