Meta just pulled off a rare corporate redemption arc. After nearly shutting down Supernatural, the VR fitness game that actually made working out fun, the tech giant has allowed it to spin out as an independent company called Supernatural Health.
Meta spent eight months battling antitrust regulators and dropped around $400 million to acquire Within, the studio behind Supernatural, back in 2023. Then it laid off most of its VR team and announced the beloved app would stop getting new content. Fans protested.
Supernatural users flooded social media demanding the app survive. About five months after the layoffs, Meta allowed the original Supernatural founders to take their game independent later this year.
"Supernatural is being reborn," the new Supernatural Health team wrote on their website. "Same coaches, same DNA, same obsession with making fitness feel like the best part of your day — now under a new, independent company we're starting from the ground up."
One fan summed up the emotional whiplash in the public Supernatural Facebook group: "Like so many of us I was so devastated when the coaches were let go and we were told our beloved Supernatural, while we loved it and it was great, would never get any better than it was."
The whole saga is equal parts heartwarming and infuriating. As TechCrunch reports, it's like Meta spent months fighting for custody of a child only to hand them back to their parents the moment things got messy.
At least one online community escaped the reach of Big Tech. And fitness enthusiasts can keep their beloved coaches.
