The billionaire CEO of Epic Games, the company behind the popular online game Fortnite, has denied claims that the metaverse is dead.
In a recent tweet, Tim Sweeney poked fun at a Business Insider article that suggested the metaverse had run its course, pointing to the number of active users in some of the more popular virtual worlds.
“The Metaverse is dead! Let’s hold an online wake so we 600,000,000 monthly active users across Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, Pub Mobile, Sandbox and VRChat can mourn its passing together in real-time 3D.”
The tweet came in response to a post by Ed Zitron, CEO of EZPR, a technology and business public relations agency, who claimed that the “once-buzzy technology” was “dead after being abandoned by the business world.” “
The article specifically mentions Meta’s virtual reality (VR) platform Horizon Worlds, which Zitron claims has failed to deliver on its “grand promise” of becoming the future of the Internet.
It also claims that Decentraland and Yuga Labs’ The Otherside have failed to live up to their hype and that investors have turned their attention to the next big tech craze – generative AI.
However, Sweeney refuted this claim, noting that there are 600 million monthly active users on virtual world platforms such as Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, The Sandbox and VR Chat.
The metaverse becomes the center of debate as AI mania takes over
The metaverse has been the subject of intense debate in the tech world, with some industry leaders such as Bill Gates expressing a bleak view.
The bleak outlook on the metaverse isn’t entirely out of place, especially since many of the idea’s big proponents have recently scaled back on their ambitions.
Just last month, entertainment giant Disney announced It is eliminating its Metaverse division as part of wider layoffs that will affect more than 7,000 employees.
In addition, Microsoft has Close This year its Industrial Metaverse Core Team, a four-month-old project aimed at encouraging the use of Metaverse in industrial environments. The tech giant also laid off all the employees working on the project, which number around 100 people.
However, other tech companies like Meta are committed to the concept.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied claims that the company has turned away from the Metaverse in favor of AI during the company’s earnings call.
“A narrative has developed that we are somehow moving away from focusing on the Metaverse vision, so I just want to say that’s not accurate,” he said.
Similarly, Sweeney’s Epic Games is investing heavily in the technology.
In April last year the company raised $2 billion in financing from Sony and investment firm KIRKBI to “advance the company’s vision for building out the metaverse.”
