On this multi-player virtual platform, players move and interact with each other in various worlds that host events, games, and social activities.

[1][2][3][4] Horizon Worlds has received mixed reviews, with critics citing bugs and an unenjoyable environment that degrades the user experience.

In August 2023, Meta announced a new first-party studio called Ouro Interactive to build Horizon Worlds games.

In October 2022, Meta announced that they will be launching a web version, allowing users to access the game without a headset as well.

"[21] In August 2021, Facebook released the open beta of Horizon Workrooms, a collaboration app targeted at teams managing remote-work environments.

[25] In April 2022, Meta started testing monetization in Horizon Worlds in the form of in-app purchases, where a few select creators began selling virtual items, such as power-ups, to players 18 years and older.

They were fully rolled out in October 2024 along with a system to create custom clothes with AI in the Meta Horizon mobile app.

When Horizon Worlds was first announced in 2019 under the name Facebook Horizon, Josh Constine writing for TechCrunch compared it to other social virtual worlds such as Second Life, The Sims, AltspaceVR, Dreams, Roblox, as well as the fictional "OASIS" described in the novel Ready Player One,[35] while Sam Machkovech writing for Ars Technica emphasised similarities to Rec Room and VRChat.

[41] Freedman speculated that Facebook could use this knowledge to generate advertising revenue with ads that permeate Facebook Horizon and "might appear as billboards, signage, skywriting, computer-generated characters hawking goods and services, logos embedded in objects and surfaces, and any other form that can be crammed into any nook or cranny of fake reality.

"[40] Kotaku described Horizon Worlds as "a strange experience" and that the overall vibe felt "less toxic than [they] expected, considering how awful Facebook is", and also called it a "hollow, corporate shell that has more in common with an office than it does a playground, or any other type of social space a human being would willingly want to hang out in.

"[42] TheGamer also described Horizon Worlds as "less of a virtual utopia, and more of a glitchy, incomplete cluster of experiences" and criticized the current relative lack of safety features and poor management of misinformation and hate speech on the platform and described it as a "corporate reality that only investors and venture capitalists are seeking.

"[43] Vishal Shah, VP of Metaverse at Meta, commented that users and creators have provided feedback to the team about the lack of stability and prevalence of bugs in the platform.

[2][46] In an October 2022 report, the Wall Street Journal stated that most users of Horizon Worlds only stay on the platform for a month, ending their interactions with it afterward.

[53][54] In another incident, a female reporter from the Wall Street Journal was asked to expose herself by another user while trying to conduct interviews in the game.

Included with the post was an image depicting his avatar in front of interpretations of the Eiffel Tower (France) and Sagrada Família (Spain).

[70][72] On August 19, 2022, Mark Zuckerberg responded to the memes on Instagram writing "the photo I posted earlier this week was pretty basic — it was taken very quickly to celebrate at launch", but reassured players that the graphics of Horizon Worlds were capable of "so much more"; included with the post was a more modern render of his avatar, as well as an ancient Rome environment.