Guest Article By Julian Reyes Julian Reyes is an award-winning XR producer, with more than two decades of experience spanning immersive media, storytelling, music culture, and technology. He is the Founder and Director of the Virtual Worlds Museum , where he leads efforts to preserve, explore, and showcase the history, culture, and future of virtual worlds. This June, he’ll speak at the AWE USA 2026 panel discussion, “How We Can Preserve Online Worlds and Why It Matters” . There is a particular kind of grief that comes when a virtual world sunsets. It is easy for some to frame these closures as the disappearance of a product, a platform, or a failed business model. But those of us who have spent time inside virtual worlds know better. When a world goes dark, we do not simply lose connectivity. We lose places. We lose rituals, relationships, events, art, architecture, memory, and the transcendent sense of belonging that only emerges when a community spends enough time together to turn a platform into a home.…