SK Telecom pulls the plug on Ifland

One of its biggest proponents, SK Telecom (SKT), will shut down its Ifland metaverse platform next year, freeing up resources that can be poured into the current darling of the tech world, generative AI (GenAI).

"We would like to express our deepest gratitude to our customers who have always used Ifland. [The] Ifland service will be terminated on Monday, March 31, 2025," the telco said on the Ifland Website (in Korean), providing instructions for how users can get refunded for in-app purchases.

It issued a similarly brief announcement on Ifland Studio, the platform used by developers to create and sell virtual items on Ifland. As of Monday it was no longer possible to launch new items, and sales of existing items will cease on 23 December.

The announcements were made with very little fanfare last week, and SKT almost managed to keep the cat in the bag until the story was picked up earlier this week by BusinessKorea.

A spokesperson for SKT was light on detail, merely telling the outlet that "as a global AI company, we aim to concentrate our capabilities on AI."

As for how many loyal Ifland users will be affected, SKT hasn't been very forthcoming about that, which is typically the way of things when a service doesn't gain the desired traction.

CEO Ryu Young-sang said in a strategy update in February 2023 that there were 4 million monthly active users (MAUs) – presumably that number has since dwindled or at least remained flat, otherwise SKT wouldn't be pulling the plug.

Ifland was launched in 2021 at the crest of the metaverse hype wave, as the pandemic led many tech execs to the mistaken belief that people were clamouring to spend their time – and crucially money – in virtual worlds, interacting with fellow users and brands.

A little over a year after it launched, SKT rolled out Ifland in 49 international markets, and partnered with major telcos Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile US, Axiata and CelcomDigi to promote its metaverse platform to even more customers.

But as the pandemic eased off, and excitement for metaverse gave way to GenAI hype, online virtual worlds fell out of favour. Platforms like Fortnite and Roblox are still going strong, but they are more akin to online gaming platforms that happen to incorporate elements of metaverse functionality, rather than the other way round.

Meanwhile, over at Facebook – which chugged so much metaverse Kool-Aid it changed its name to Meta – work continues on its own platform, Horizon Worlds, albeit fairly quietly.

RoadtoVR reported in November that Meta has launched a digital currency for Horizon Worlds, called Meta Credits, that allows users to spend real money on virtual items.

The number of MAUs who will actually be out there purchasing Meta Credits is anyone's guess, because like SKT, Meta has gone quiet when it comes to divulging how many people use Horizon Worlds.

Last August, a YouTuber by the name of Jarvis Johnson spent a lonely week inhabiting Horizon Worlds, and reportedly encountered fewer than 1,000 English-speaking users.

Andrew Bosworth, CTO and head of Reality Labs at Meta, this week noted some of the work that has been done this year to grow Horizon Worlds, including rolling it out on mobile and overhauling the avatar system, which lets people represent their virtual selves across apps and virtual reality (VR) headsets.

"As the visual quality and overall experience with these systems improve, more people are getting their first glimpse of a social metaverse," he said. "We're seeing similar trends with new Quest 3S [VR headset] users spending more time in Horizon Worlds, making it a top three immersive app for Quest 3S, and people continue creating new Meta Avatars across mobile and MR (mixed reality).”

How many users are there? Bosworth didn't say, probably because the number is a million miles from where it needs to be.

Metaverse might still not be quite dead yet, but the withdrawal of SKT, and the scant detail coming from the likes of Meta, makes for a grim prognosis.