Meta, in a restructuring of its Reality Labs division, has initiated job cuts which are expected to impact over 1,000 employees. According to Bloomberg, the employees were notified of the layoffs starting Tuesday morning. As news of the restructuring broke, LinkedIn became a hub for #OpenToWork posts, with impacted engineers, designers, and managers sharing their gratitude for their time at Meta while urgently seeking their next professional chapter.
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According to an internal memo, reviewed by the outlet, Meta is shutting three of its in-house VR game and content studios as part of the cuts. They are Armature, Sanzaru, and Twisted Pixel. The company still has five other studios, including Camouflaj, Glassworks, Games, BigBox, and OURO.
“Laid off within a year”
A video game content writer who had been working with Sanzaru took to LinkedIn to activate the “Open To Work” feature on his profile, sharing how he was impacted by the recent layoffs.
“A year ago, I joined the wonderful crew at Sanzaru Games as a writer and narrative consultant. Sanzaru's closure today is a big loss for VR games as a medium. I'm sorry to see this happen, and my heart goes out to all of my teammates, my long-time collaborators at Camouflaj who got hit, and everyone else impacted by Meta's layoffs,” he wrote.
“It’s not how I expected this chapter to end”
Another impacted individual posted, “Today I was impacted by the Meta layoffs. It’s not how I expected this chapter to end, but I’m deeply grateful for the people, growth, and work. I’m now open to new opportunities where I can continue creating at a high level and supporting strong creative teams,” along with the #opentowork hashtag.
{{/usCountry}}Another impacted individual posted, “Today I was impacted by the Meta layoffs. It’s not how I expected this chapter to end, but I’m deeply grateful for the people, growth, and work. I’m now open to new opportunities where I can continue creating at a high level and supporting strong creative teams,” along with the #opentowork hashtag.
{{/usCountry}}While people are looking for new opportunities on LinkedIn, many have taken to other social media platforms to vent about being caught in the 2026 layoff wave.
Why the layoffs?
The layoffs came as part of the Reality Labs restructuring, with Meta shifting its focus from the Metaverse to AI devices.
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“We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from metaverse toward wearables,” a company spokesperson said. “This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year.”