Longtime Horizon Worlds builders are still running clubs, card rooms, and businesses on Quest — even as Meta steers the platform toward MOBILE ahead of Connect.
A Technical.ly REPORT published September 18, 2026 documents what many Quest owners already feel on the ground: HORIZON WORLDS remains a HOME for committed creators, while Meta’s ROADMAP and PAYOUTS keep shifting toward MOBILE GAMES. Meta Connect opens September 23 in Menlo Park. Several creators told the outlet they are waiting for that stage before deciding how hard to leave.
What Meta Changed — And What It Did Not
In MARCH, Meta said Horizon Worlds would leave Quest VR headsets as the company REFUSED to keep treating Worlds as a VR-first product. The backlash was immediate. Meta then partly REVERSED course, saying EXISTING VR WORLDS would remain ACCESSIBLE “for the foreseeable future.” That REVERSAL kept the lights on. It did not restore the old DEAL for creators who built full-time businesses inside the headset.
Meta’s own developer messaging has been blunt about the SPLIT: Quest VR stays a PLATFORM for apps and games, while Worlds attention and FUNDING tilt toward MOBILE. Technical.ly notes Meta did not RESPOND to questions about creator COMPENSATION or the mobile-first STRATEGY before publication.
Creators Still Building — And Getting Paid Less
Reporter Holly Quinn rode Indie Tours VR’s party bus through neon Worlds spaces built by Black creators who treat the platform as CULTURE, not a DEMO. Host Sue2daq framed the tour as a NETWORKING HUB that spotlights artists Meta’s discovery tools often miss. Entrepreneur Linda Watson — known in-headset as DaLBoogie — described Worlds as the place she can RUN and JUMP after limited mobility offline, and as a COMMUNITY that helped her through GRIEF after her mother died in 2024. With Delaware Department of Labor SUPPORT, she is building Creative Ave to bridge traditional businesses into IMMERSIVE platforms.
Event promoter Thickaz24 said a newer world drew about 100,000 VISITS in its first month under Meta’s earlier activity-based PAYOUTS. Under the newer STIPEND model, she said earnings fell to “not even HALF” of prior income — still better than ZERO, but a clear SIGNAL that Meta wants game-building skills over nightlife promotion. Singer-songwriter Kharmanee keeps staging LIVE performances with a sound engineer, then rebuilt Cliff House on VRChat when audiences followed.
Hardy World Spades 2K26 — Khaleem Solomon’s long-running Black social card space — still draws players to the tables. Solomon previously told Technical.ly the world was a FULL-TIME business drawing roughly 1,000 visits a week. That persistence matters: when a community member died, Thickaz returned to Horizon for a MEMORIAL because that was still the PLACE that made sense.
The Exit Ramp Is VRChat — And Connect
Builder DaUndaBoss, who started in Horizon in 2022, now says he is “mostly VRCHAT,” citing Unity tooling and more flexibility than Meta’s walled garden. Watson is learning VRChat too — while insisting Horizon “really is our HOME.” The pattern is familiar from every platform retreat: creators PORT events faster than they port belonging.
Connect begins SEPTEMBER 23. Meta has already framed Worlds as MOBILE-FIRST in public developer posts. The Technical.ly piece does not claim a shutdown date for VR Worlds. It does show the human COST of a strategy that keeps the headset ONLINE while starving the SOCIAL ECONOMY that made the place worth logging into. Watch the keynote for whether Meta treats that gap as a BUG — or as the PLAN.
Sources: Technical.ly — For Horizon Worlds creators, leaving Meta isn’t as simple as logging off (Holly Quinn, Sep 18, 2026); Meta Horizon OS Developers — VR state of the union / mobile focus.