The European Union spent $400K on an event in the metaverse—and only 6 people showed up. 

The European Union spent $400K on an event in the metaverse—and only 6 people showed up. In hopes of promoting their Global Gateway Initiative, “which aims to spend $300 billion by 2027 building new infrastructure in developing countries” the EU celebrated the development of their dedicated metaverse platform last week, but while the spokesperson mentioned 300 participants, a guest reported only being with five other people in the virtual room. Unfortunately, this is not the first time a metaverse project failed to gain traction: a few months ago, metaverse platform Decentraland reported having only 38 active daily users. There’s seems to be a disconnect between the media’s metaverse hype and the number of Gen Z and Millennials who are actually interested in being a part of new virtual worlds outside of the open world games they already love to play. YPulse’s WE Metaverse trend report found that 54% of young Europeans play video games that involve being part of a virtual world, but only 17% say they have spent time in “the metaverse.” (Fortune)