You are conflating the industry term 'metaverse' with Facebooks billions of investments and huge PR push on their 'Metaverse' which has so far been solely Horizon Worlds.

Similarly, despite the obscure industry term predating Facebooks push, it is not a common term, and even techies do not think of Minecraft and other digital worlds as being 'Facebooks Metaverse'.

A company cannot just start using a term and then retroactivly justify their expense based on other external examples.

> You are conflating the industry term 'metaverse' with Facebooks billions of investments and huge PR push on their 'Metaverse'

No, you are.

> it is not a common term, and even techies do not think of Minecraft and other digital worlds as being 'Facebooks Metaverse'

Here's a well-publicized example of techies persistently doing just that:

October 2021: https://medium.com/@ow/the-metaverse-is-already-here-its-cal...

August 2022: https://tech.hindustantimes.com/gaming/news/fortnite-gamemak...

September 2022: https://mashable.com/article/fortnite-is-the-real-metaverse

September 2022: https://nordic.ign.com/fortnite/60374/opinion/how-fortnite-i...

December 2022: https://mixed-news.com/en/fortnite-studio-epic-games-develop...

December 2022: https://coingape.com/education/explained-fortnite-game-and-w...

Note that link would have returned a page saying the article didn't exist prior to Facebook's announcement.

While the term was certainly used prior to the announcement what made it anywhere close to common was Facebook's version (the first small bump and the second overwhelming bump) https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...