Farewell

This is a special edition – the Metaverse EU team is saying goodbye.

Metaverse EU has been quiet this year. That’s partly because of the team's other commitments and partly due to the lull in business and regulatory interest in the metaverse (or “virtual worlds”).

It’s always been our view that the metaverse will be an evolution rather than a revolution, and we aimed to cover this topic with sobriety. While clumsy visions of the metaverse at the height of business excitement are thankfully a distant memory, adoption continues to creep forward.

The VR headset market grows year on year, with much of the R&D now funnelled into building smart glasses (Apple will launch its first set of specs next year). With newer AI models, too, it is becoming trivially easy to create virtual personas and creative content.

There remains positive policy momentum, too, from the European Commission, which released last month its first brief on virtual worlds. The virtual worlds staff communicate regularly about their work on LinkedIn. We encourage you to follow them here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-bajart-57b6081/.

We’re proud of our work reporting on and shaping EU initiatives on this topic, from covering the Citizens Panel on Virtual Worlds, to interviewing industry leaders such as Matthew Ball, to bringing together 19 organisations in a joint letter to the EU.

Thanks for reading. We’re deeply grateful to all those who were part of or helped the project on its way.