Virtual Reality Yoga App Developer to Meta: I Worked Like ‘Hell’ Only to Get Burned
Andre Elijah created a virtual reality yoga app, with avatars of top instructors teaching various poses, as well as pilates and mindfulness — all of which users will never see, he alleged in a lawsuit, because Meta Platforms Inc. killed it just before launch time.
Meta canceled Elijah's AEI Fitness app days before its unveiling at Meta Connect, the world's biggest VR conference, which he says would have propelled it to the top of the VR fitness app market, eventually reaping him tens of millions of dollars.
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“It was hell working on it, and we got there,” Elijah said in an interview, adding that the company made a “gorgeous” trailer for its presentation at the conference. But while preparing to be part of Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg's keynote, he says he was told “‘No, the project's killed, we're not giving you your money. '”
Meta banned Elijah from the conference, and added his name to a “blacklist” of developers it refuses to do business with, according to the complaint he filed this week in federal court in San Jose, California.
The lawsuit offers a rare look inside the personal sacrifices developers make to hitch themselves to Meta's full-throttle push into the metaverse. The company has been under pressure from investors to sell more of its VR headsets after years of operating losses in its VR tech division. One of the barriers preventing consumers from buying more VR headsets is the lack of apps and content compared to mobile phones or computers.
The reason for Meta's reprisal, according to Elijah, is that he also talked with Apple Inc. and ByteDance's Pico about launching his app on their competing VR platforms. His antitrust complaint portrays Meta as conspiring to
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