After 18 years at Meta, the company’s VP of VR and mixed reality (MR) is calling it quits. Mark Rabkin, who has had the title of VP of VR/MR since the Oculus Quest 2 launched in 2020, is passing the baton on to Vishal Shah, the current VP of Metaverse at Meta. Shah is expected to assume the full title of VP of VR/MR at the beginning of March.
In a letter shared on Facebook, Rabkin describes his nearly two decades time at Meta as a “foundational, formative experience.” Rabkin cites that his main reason for leaving is because of family health struggles at home, noting that he’ll be taking some time off work rather than just moving to a different position inside the company.
Rabkin has helped shape the ecosystem that drives Meta Quest headsets over the past six years, including the transition from Oculus to Meta branding, steering the division to record revenues of over 1 billion dollars last quarter alone. He also shaped the transformation of the Meta Horizon OS from an Oculus-branded product to one that third parties will soon be using. At Meta Connect 2024, he was a big proponent of the recently launched Meta Quest 3S which is part of a 40% sales increase according to a leaked memo (via UploadVR).
But Rabkin was also behind a controversial change last Fall to the Meta Horizon Store — the digital marketplace where Meta Quest users can purchase and download games and apps — which saw app curation replaced with what developers have described as “utter chaos.” A bad update this past Christmas also left many customers with a poor first impression of Meta Quest headsets. We expect some big changes as Vishal Shah heads into the new position, starting with the Meta Horizon store.
Big changes on the Horizon
The Meta Horizon ecosystem has seen massive changes over the past year and we expect Shah’s promotion to usher in even more. Since the Meta Horizon OS announcement last April, we’ve seen the Meta Quest app change names to Meta Horizon and get a huge facelift, Meta’s Horizon metaverse (we’re confused too) become a prominent promotional part of the Meta Quest, and the app store’s curation model get completely removed.
The previous content curation headed by Meta’s Director of Games, Chris Pruett, was axed in favor of a more “open” ecosystem last Summer. Previously, apps and games only appeared on the main Meta store if Meta approved them. This model created problems because Meta’s lack of transparency meant developers rarely understood why their apps or games were approved or rejected. Meta often relegated unapproved games to App Lab, making them difficult to find and monetize.
Pruett came under fire several times because his own development studio, Robot Invader, had no problem getting its Dead Secret series of games approved on the store more than once. After years of complaints from developers, Meta abandoned its content curation methods in favor of a wild west approach, spearheaded by Rabkin and paraded heavily at Meta Connect 2024.
The Meta Horizon store went from heavy curation under lock and key to the wild west in a few short months, and developers aren’t happy about the whiplash.
Developer and customer response to the change has been less than positive. Over the past few months, I’ve spoken with several developers who feel their game has “been buried” on the Quest store by dozens of Gorilla Tag clones that flood the store every day. Meta has also heavily promoted its Meta Horizon “metaverse” app, which is built into every Quest headset, over other paid apps and games on the store.
It has left a bad taste in some developers’ mouths and customers aren’t happy with the new curation options, either. Over the past few months, I’ve seen many people on social media ask why they’re being served Horizon Worlds content instead of big-name games like Batman Arkham Shadow, Behemoth, and Alien Rogue Incursion.
But if you think this era of Meta Horizon store curation is about to end, think again.
Mark Rabkin’s successor, Vishal Shah, is the man in charge of the Metaverse and has been since Mark Zuckerberg introduced the concept in August 2021. The grandiose presentation was always underscored with an “eventually” clause and the company was ridiculed for years because Zuckerberg’s vision is proving to be a difficult task to achieve.
In his most recent Instagram AMA, Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth answered a question directed at the future of Horizon Worlds and the Metaverse the company has been trying to build. Boz admitted that “I think we had to get a lot of a lot more pieces in place than we thought when we started,” in relation to executing on the vision of the Metaverse and, more specifically, the successful rollout of Horizon Worlds.
Boz went on to say that the metaverse concept as a whole is already alive and well among gamers. “People are already having very Metaverse experiences in Fortnite, in Roblox, in all these other platforms.” I also wrote about this before Fortnite started calling itself a metaverse platform, and now Meta has to push hard to get Horizon Worlds to be even a fraction as popular as Roblox or Fortnite currently are.
It is about filling our products with “Give A Damn”. This is about having pride in our work.
Andrew Bosworth, CTO of Meta
That push all starts with mobile, not VR or MR. In a memo leaked to Business Insider (via UploadVR), Boz outlined that 2025 “likely determines whether this entire effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure.” It’s a fiery line that echoes what Mark Zuckerberg just said in Meta’s latest earnings report when he touted that 2025 would be a “pivotal year for the metaverse.”
Boz’s memo touched on the importance of small teams pulling off “operational excellence and master craftsmanship,” almost certainly alluding to the botched rollout of an update that bricked Meta Quest headsets over Christmas break and caused Meta to have to replace them for free.
If I can expect anything for the Meta Quest in 2025, it’s the launch of lots of new, big ideas and the decoupling of the idea that the metaverse has to somehow be experienced solely in VR.
“It is about filling our products with ‘Give A Damn’. This is about having pride in our work.” The “give a damn” quote is a reference to the shocking letter the previous CTO, John Carmack, posted on social media when he resigned in December 2022. The company didn’t care enough about its products back then, urged Carmack, and it seems that Boz is noticing that enough hasn’t changed in the two years since then.
Does this mean we’ll see a leaner Meta Quest development team that is quicker to respond to criticism? Almost certainly, yes. But it also means that Meta will be, undoubtedly, pushing its Horizon Worlds metaverse platform just as hard or even harder than it did in 2024.
After all, what use it is in putting the man in charge of the Metaverse in charge of everything VR and MR if the fulfillment of a long-term vision isn’t in sight? If I can expect anything for the Meta Quest in 2025, it’s the launch of lots of new, big ideas and the decoupling of the idea that the metaverse has to somehow be experienced solely in VR.