As Meta cuts employees from its Supernatural VR fitness service and shifts resources away, users mourn the community formed around the platform and its coaches
Users of the VR fitness service are distraught that Supernatural has had its staff cut and won't receive any more content updates.
WiredBoone Ashworth
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta acquired Supernatural’s developer in 2021 with the aim of carrying the fitness service forward alongside its VR hardware efforts. The current retrenchment reverses that support model: the broader Reality Labs cuts included ending new Supernatural content and features as well as studio closures.
The user response shows that Supernatural’s value was not limited to its software catalog. Coaches and shared routines had become part of the product experience, making a staffing decision immediately consequential for member retention and trust.
First-order effects
Supernatural users lose the prospect of new content and feature development, while staff cuts reduce the service’s ability to sustain the coach-led experience members associate with the platform.
Meta narrows its direct investment in a subscription-oriented VR fitness service it acquired to help advance its VR ecosystem.
Second-order effects
A stagnant content pipeline raises the risk that members disengage or cancel, weakening the service’s role as recurring engagement for Quest users.
The move reinforces the trade-off in Meta’s VR portfolio: funding proprietary services can build platform differentiation, but those offerings become liabilities when resource priorities change.
Third-order effects
If platform owners continue to pull back from internally funded VR services, specialized apps may need business models less dependent on a single hardware company’s strategic commitment.
The episode points to a broader test for VR subscriptions: community and live-service relationships can be durable user assets, yet remain vulnerable when content investment is centralized inside a hardware platform.
The trend: VR platform owners are reassessing the cost of exclusive, continuously updated services as they concentrate resources on fewer priorities.
“This just feels like a gut punch,” says Stacey Goff Johnson, a Supernatural user who credits the service with helping her lose more than 100 pounds and improve her blood pressure over the course of two years. “It can't all just be AI, AI, AI.” — Latest @wired.com piece from @…
When I really struggled with depression during the pandemic and my weight got to a bad place, Supernatural was the first thing I did to start digging myself out of the hole because it was something I could do at home. This absolutely sucks. Fuck Meta and Zuckerberg for this. […
This is such a classic instance of what happens when a startup with a community of devoted fans gets acquired by a megacorp and then put on life support. www.wired.com/story/metas-...
Supernatural is perhaps the single most useful and beloved VR app ever. People who rely on it are dismayed that it will likely soon be a casualty of Meta's all-in-on-AI tactics. — www.wired.com/story/metas-...
“Meta fought the government to buy this thing,” Benavidez says. “All that just for them to shut it down? What was the point?” — www.wired.com/story/metas-...