It is as you say, but look at the difference. Allowing metaverse to grow is only going to hurt them, while the potential profits from the metaverse could be massive. They deemed it a risk worth taking because of the potential success. Meta won't leave the fate of lemmy up to chance, because they decided we are not very likely to disappear in time.

The metaverse (that game) was released before it was done in any way for the marketing hype, but they are still working on the VR headsets. Once those are ready for mass adoption, the metaverse will have a comeback, and a hard one. People love sucking on marketing titties, and that won't be any different.