Meta has begun a new round of job cuts as part of a restructuring of its Reality Labs division, a move expected to affect more than 1,000 employees, underscoring the continued turbulence in its metaverse ambitions.
Employees started receiving layoff notices on Tuesday morning, Bloomberg reported. The cuts have rippled quickly beyond Meta’s offices and into the professional networks many of those workers now depend on. Within hours, LinkedIn was flooded with #OpenToWork posts from engineers, designers, and managers who said they had been impacted.
Many of the posts struck a familiar tone seen across the tech sector in recent years: gratitude for the opportunity to work at Meta, pride in the products and teams they helped build, and an urgent appeal for leads, referrals, or new roles as they navigate an uncertain job market.
Further details of the overhaul point to deeper cuts within Meta’s virtual reality ecosystem. An internal memo reviewed by the outlet shows that the company is closing three of its in-house VR game and content studios as part of the restructuring.
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The studios being shut are Armature, Sanzaru, and Twisted Pixel, teams that were brought in to help build exclusive content and strengthen Meta’s VR ambitions. Their closure marks a significant pullback from in-house game development at a time when the company is reassessing where to focus its resources.
Meta will still retain five other internal studios—Camouflaj, Glassworks, Games, BigBox, and OURO, suggesting it is narrowing, rather than abandoning, its approach to VR content.
The human impact of the shutdowns has also begun to surface publicly. A video game content writer who worked with Sanzaru shared his experience on LinkedIn after activating the platform’s “Open to Work” feature, saying he was among those affected by the latest round of layoffs.
“A year ago, I joined the wonderful crew at Sanzaru Games as a writer and narrative consultant. Sanzaru’s closure today is a big loss for VR games as a medium. I’m sorry to see this happen, and my heart goes out to all of my teammates, my long-time collaborators at Camouflaj who got hit, and everyone else impacted by Meta’s layoffs,” he wrote.
More affected employees have continued to share their stories online as the layoffs ripple through Meta’s creative and development teams. Another individual who said they were impacted posted a message on LinkedIn reflecting on the abrupt turn in their career.
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“Today I was impacted by the Meta layoffs. It’s not how I expected this chapter to end, but I’m deeply grateful for the people, growth, and work. I’m now open to new opportunities where I can continue creating at a high level and supporting strong creative teams,” the post read, accompanied by the #opentowork hashtag.
As former employees search for their next roles on LinkedIn, frustration and anger have spilled over onto other social media platforms, where many are openly venting about being swept up in the 2026 layoff wave.
The job cuts are tied to Meta’s broader restructuring of Reality Labs, as the company recalibrates its priorities away from parts of the metaverse and toward artificial intelligence–driven devices and wearables. In response to questions about the layoffs, a Meta spokesperson pointed to that strategic shift.
“We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from metaverse toward wearables,” the spokesperson said. “This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year.”
For workers who built careers around Meta’s VR and metaverse vision, the pivot has underscored how quickly the company’s long-term bets can change, often with little warning for the teams behind them.