Meta CTO says he's sorry about the removal of Quest's achievements app
Meta's CTO says he's sorry about the removed Scoreboards app and remains silent on a possible replacement for the functionality.
The Quest app Scoreboards allowed you to systematically track inside your headset which achievements you had unlocked, a fundamental feature of many modern game platforms.
The app was removed from Meta on December 20, 2024, and has not been available on Quest devices since. While the achievement system still works, there is no way to systematically track your achievements, not even in the Meta Horizon app.
In an email last year alerting users to the change, Meta wrote that the discontinuation "will not affect other scoreboard or achievement features integrated into your user profile and other surfaces on Quest" and that you "will still be able to keep track of your scores and achievements through these existing features". What exactly Meta means by this is not clear.
CTO explains the decision
In his most recent AMA on Instagram, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth was asked about the removal of scoreboards. He cites low usage of the app as the reason for its removal and apologizes to the fans of the apps. Notably, he remains silent on a possible replacement.
Here is Bosworth's full answer:
"Oh, man, yeah, this sucks. When you launch a new feature, you want it to be something that everyone uses all the time, but you'll tolerate if it's something that everyone uses a little bit, and actually, it's not that bad if nobody ever uses it because then you can just cut it. The worst place to land is a thing where a small number of people use it all the time, and that was what happened with scoreboards and achievements. A like very, very, very small number of people were very loyal to it.
Those features, you get enough of them, they kind of build up, and you have a very fragmented experience in terms of where you're putting your energy. You're putting your energy towards a large number of things that each of which have a very small, loyal following. It's a very hard way to make system-wide progress and make sure that you're putting the majority of your energy towards the things that's going to help the majority of people.
So we do sometimes have to make a tough call, and reclaim those features and reclaim the energy going towards those features, that doesn't make it any less heartbreaking to the obviously very loyal community that was using those, and I do see other posts. I am sorry about that."
This is speculation on my part, but perhaps the functionality will return one day with the "system-wide progress" Bosworth mentions, or the Meta Horizon app will eventually get its own dedicated achievements section.
What do you think of the removal of the Scoreboards app? Join the conversation on Facebook, Bluesky or X or share your opinion in the comments below.
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