My fists flail, punching the air as sweat drips from my VR headset. I hear a strangers’ heavy breathing through the rollicking dude bro anthem blasting my eardrums, courtesy of the pop rock band Imagine Dragons. Me and two people I just met are punching digital blocks that fly at our heads in the VR workout platform Supernatural. We’re breaking in, shaping up.
My new friends have nameplates floating above their heads that say Chip and Alisa. That’s all I know about them. When the song ends, we each rest our respective real-life bodies, who knows how far apart, out of breath. This workout had us weaving, jabbing, and hitting lots of flying blocks for points. I feel it in my bones. While I nearly punched the TV in front of me several times, I missed many of the digital blocks I was supposed to hit. That brought our group score down. I wipe my brow and start to apologize. They quickly stop me.
“It’s OK,” Alisa says. “We’re all in this together.”
”I always say,” Chip says, “if I miss ‘em, as long as I swung at ‘em I’m still getting a workout,”
His avatar gives me a high five. I grin. Then we all punch more blocks together.
All Systems Go
Supernatural is a virtual reality fitness subscription service available on Meta Quest headsets. It works like a mix of Peloton and Beat Saber. Users pop into beautiful virtual locations like the French Alps, then join lessons narrated by exuberant coaches who guide them through rhythmic boxing matches or more flowy dance sessions. Released in 2020, Supernatural was consistently one of the best performing apps in Meta’s VR app store, and it was widely hailed as a flagship app for the medium.
But Meta’s widespread layoffs this week to its Reality Labs division included cuts at Supernatural, though the number of people at Supernatural who have been affected is still unclear. While Supernatural’s service is not ending yet, the platform will no longer receive any updates like new songs or workout lessons. In emailed responses to questions from users shared with WIRED, one of the remaining Supernatural representatives wrote that the current $100 per year price of the service’s subscription will not change, even though there are no plans for new content.
For many of Supernatural’s users and avid fans, this is it, the apocalypse.
“This just feels like a gut punch,” says Stacey Goff Johnson, a Supernatural user who credits the service with helping her lose more than 100 pounds and improve her blood pressure over the course of two years. “It can’t all just be AI, AI, AI.”
The reported reason for Meta’s rejiggering of its finances is to shovel funds into the company’s forays into artificial intelligence like its Meta AI platform and its Ray Ban and Oakley smart glasses. Meta is also shoring up its so-called superintelligence lab to build the next generation of AI tools.
The thing Goff Johnson will miss the most from this shakeup is the sense of community earned when humans exercise together. “The last thing people need to be doing right now is retreating into their headsets or on their computer. This was kind of a bridge for that. It enabled human interaction in a different way that I haven’t found with anything else.”
Supernatural introduced its multiplayer Together mode just over a year ago in September 2024. Even before that, communities of Supernatural users (they call themselves athletes) had already formed around the service. Users and coaches have planned meetup events and informal hangs outside of VR. Since the layoffs, Supernatural users have begun a sort of grieving process for the virtual space they see as being on a death march. They have lamented the changes in Facebook groups and subreddits. They’ve written heartbroken eulogies and pleas for Meta to consider reinvesting in the service.
Tencia Benavidez, a Supernatural user who lives in New Mexico, started her VR workouts during the Covid pandemic. She has been a regular user in the five years since, calling the ability to workout in VR ideal, given that she lives in a rural area where it’s hard to get to a gym or workout outside during a brutal winter. She stuck with Supernatural because of the community and the eagerness of Supernatural’s coaches.
“They seem like really authentic individuals that were not talking down to you,” Benavidez says. “There’s just something really special about those coaches.”
Meta bought Supernatural in 2022, folding it into its then-heavily invested in metaverse efforts. The purchase was not a smooth process, as it triggered a lengthy legal battle in which the US Federal Trade Commission tried to block Meta from purchasing the service due to antitrust concerns about Meta “trying to buy its way to the top” of the VR market. Meta ultimately prevailed. At the time, some Supernatural users were cautiously optimistic, hoping that big bag of Zuckerbucks could keep its workout juggernaut afloat.
“Meta fought the government to buy this thing,” Benavidez says. “All that just for them to shut it down? What was the point?”
I reached out to Meta and Supernatural, and neither responded to my requests for comment.
Waking Up to Ash and Dust
On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Meta has laid off more than 1,000 people across its VR and metaverse efforts. The move comes after years of the company hemorrhaging billions of dollars on its metaverse products. In addition to laying off most of the staff at Supernatural, Meta has shut down three internal VR studios that made games like Resident Evil 4 and Deadpool VR.
“If it was a bottom line thing, I think they could have charged more money,” Goff Johnson says about Supernatural. “I think people would have paid for it. This just seems unnecessarily heartless.”
There is a split in the community about who will stay and continue to pay the subscription fee, and who will leave. Supernatural still has more than 3,000 lessons available in the service, so while new content won’t be added, some feel there is plenty of content left in the library. Other users worry about how Supernatural will continue to license music from big-name bands.
“Supernatural is amazing, but I am canceling it because of this,” Chip told me. “The library is large, so there’s enough to keep you busy, but not for the same price.”
There are other VR workout experiences like FitXR or even the VR staple Beat Saber, which Supernatural cribs a lot of design concepts from. Still, they don’t hit the same bar for many of the Supernatural faithful.
“I’m going to stick it out until they turn the lights out on us,” says Stefanie Wong, a Bay Area accountant who has used Supernatural since shortly after the pandemic and has organized and attended meetup events. “It’s not the app. It’s the community and it’s the coaches that we really, really care about.”
Welcome to the New Age
I tried out Supernatural’s Together feature on Wednesday, the day after the layoffs. It’s where I met Chip and Alisa. When we could stop to catch our breath, we talked about the changes coming to the service. They had played through previous sessions hosted by Jane Fonda or playlists with a mix of music that would change regularly. It seems the final collaboration in Supernatural’s multiplayer mode will be what we played now, an artist series featuring entirely Imagine Dragons songs.
In the session, as we punched blocks while being serenaded by this shirtless dude crooning, recorded narrations from Supernatural coach Dwana Olsen chimed in to hype us up.
“Take advantage of these moments,” Olsen said as we punched away. “Use these movements to remind you of how much awesome life you have yet to live.”
Frankly, it was downright invigorating. And bittersweet. We ended another round, sweaty, huffing and puffing. Chip, Alisa, and I high fived like crazy and readied for another round.
“Beautiful,” Alisa said. “It’s just beautiful, isn’t it?”
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