Last October, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would change its name to Meta and become a “metaverse company,” he outlined a vision of a utopian future many years from now in which thousands of millions of people would inhabit immersively. digital environments for hours on end, working, socializing and playing within virtual and augmented worlds.

Since then, Meta has spent billions of dollars and assigned thousands of employees to make Zuckerberg’s dream possible. But Meta’s metaverse efforts are off to a rocky start.