The Walt Disney Company, which this week laid off 7,000 workers, about 3% of its workforce, will close its Metaverse division, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Disney has laid off 50 people who have set up its Metaverse division as part of a major restructuring plan that will lay off up to 7,000 people over two months.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, it has already been announced by Disney’s executive director, Bob Iger, that the layoffs will begin this week. In this context, the division in charge of Metaverse Armament aims to tell interactive stories in immersive formats, using the capabilities and properties of the company, including Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars.
However, all employees were fired except for its director Mike White, who will remain with the company but it is not yet known what position he will hold.
According to the WSJ, Disney’s metaverse plans were not yet complete, although the company warned that the new technology could have applications in fantasy sports, theme park attractions and consumer experiences.
thousands of layoffs
In February, the company announced these plans as part of a plan to reduce costs by 5,500 million dollars (5,095 million euros).
According to Iger, the second part of the workers will be notified in April and the feelings will be notified in the final proposals at the beginning of the summer.
“We have made the difficult decision to reduce our global work force by approximately 7,000 jobs as part of a strategic realignment of the company, which represents cost-saving measures necessary to implement a more efficient, organized and streamlined approach to our business,” Iger wrote. .
The company announced the layoffs in February to coincide with its quarterly results, in which it reported a loss of 2.4 million subscribers to its Disney+ service.
Disney thus withdraws from the stage of the metaverse, until now dominated by Meta (the parent company of Facebook), which for its part has not just made this specific role useful for virtual reality.
Reality Labs, the metaverse of Metaverse, which includes virtual reality and augmented reality devices and software, will see losses of 34% in 2022, to 13,717 million, the company reported last February.
The Meta company has released its fourth and annual results, in both cases with sharp drops in profit and lower revenues due to increased costs and the weakness of the selling market, which continues to be primarily billing.
