Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, is being roasted online after announcing that its virtual reality (VR) avatars will soon have legs.
In a tweet on Tuesday from Meta’s account for Horizon Worlds, the company’s flagship VR multiplayer game, footage was shared indicating that appendages would be added to its long-mocked avatar torsos.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg first provided a sneak peek of the new avatars on Tuesday during the company’s Connect conference, held inside the Horizon World metaverse. The video shows Zuckerberg’s personal avatar, which has repeatedly been mocked in the past for its low-quality graphics and soulless appearance, lifting its legs and jumping up and down.
Zuckerberg admitted that legs were “probably the most requested feature” from users, an addition that has eluded many VR systems due to the difficulty of accurately tracking such body parts.
But despite the significant jump forward, users responded online by deriding the announcement.
“Are you telling me that when this launched, you could only exist as a torso and a head?” one user asked. “Are you telling me legs are a *bonus*?”
Others compared the new legs on avatars to the time when fish first evolved to come onto land.
“The first fish to crawl on to land 375 million years ago,” another quipped.
Comparisons were also made to older video game systems due to the lackluster graphics in the metaverse.
“Every ad for the metaverse is like, ‘are you ready for the Nintendo wii?!?’” one user said.
Numerous tweets also described the footage as dystopian given that a crowd of torsos was cheering on a legged Zuckerberg.
“[T]he legless baying mob gaze lustfully at their masters’ new legs, wild-eyed and primal, a roar so frenzied it incites a snap of confetti out of the air itself,” another user wrote. “[T]hey are kings and queens to them now. [G]ods, even.”
Despite the backlash and mockery, Zuckerberg continues to insist that the metaverse will play a dominant role in the future of online interactions.
