It’s Sunday, and I’m on stage Soapstone Comedy Club in the metaverse. My VR character is wearing a black suit, tie, sunglasses, and an unfortunate fedora that I’ve chosen from a bunch of free clothes for your virtual dolls. MetaHorizon World. After the show, a guy whose username is Large Phenis shows up at the bar next to me. “Hey, Blues Brothers,” he exclaims – a roaring crowd.
Soapstone of adults only the digital comics club has been around since almost the beginning of Meta’s Horizon Worlds. It has hosted more than 5,000 events, from quality and stand-up to trivia nights and open mic performances. It has been in partnership with famous comedians like Natasha Leggero, Ron Funches, and Pete Holmes. It has also served as a hub for ragtag regulars who seem to love the place.
Last week, Meta announced it would be close Horizon Worlds in VR to focus on its mobile version; it is pivot the next day after the community’s retreat to keep it going indefinitely. Now, the service is on life support. Starting June 15, Meta plans to limit the creation features in VR and stop allowing users to create updates or new content on the platform—no new worlds or seasonal updates, except on mobile.
“Soapstone is a world built by another creator and is currently available as a mobile world and a VR world,” wrote a Meta representative in an email to WIRED. “The VR version was built on Horizon Unity Runtime (HUR), and all HUR worlds will live in VR for the foreseeable future as our CTO, Andrew Bosworth, He said in his AMA.”
For the past year and a half, Soapstone user Miss Del Rey has hosted these Sunday improvement exhibition. She is from Sweden, and her avatar has bright red hair, a red dress and hat, and golden knee-high boots.
“It was surprising that they were closing this so soon,” Miss Del Rey says of the initial VR news. “It’s been this big production, and now it’s disappearing.”
In Soapstone Sunday’s first improv show since Meta’s shutdown, the people here to joke around with their brightly colored avatars aren’t sure what’s next. Soapstone says it will continue into the mobile age, but it’s unclear if consumers will follow.
“People are just afraid of uncertainty,” Del Rey says. “This might not be worth doing in VR, but I don’t think the Meta understands how important this place is to many people. I don’t know what my life would be like today without Soapstone.”
For the next hour, Del Rey and co-host Millsbertc run volunteers through high-tech games—pulling events out of a hat or asking the group to tell a story word for word that quickly spirals into corruption. (“My anacondas are small and dirty,” the group decides.)
