Varieties of interoperability in the metaverse

Interoperability has long been a central, though often overlooked, feature of digital systems. As visions of the metaverse evolve, it has become a key site of contestation. Some advocate for adversarial interoperability to break down platform lock-in and promote user freedom, while others warn that mandated openness could compromise security and reduce incentives for innovation. To make sense of these tensions, we propose a framework that links decisions about openness and closure to actor-specific economic and security goals. We identify ‘Varieties of Interoperability’ and illustrate this framework through structured examples from two components of the infrastructure layer – cloud and devices – drawn from publicly available corporate documents, policy reports, and scholarly analyses. Our analysis extends a prevalent narrative of corporate economic closure versus user-driven openness, showing that openness itself can also serve security-driven aims, such as coordination among trusted actors. The framework further suggests that, as geopolitical rivalries and digital sovereignty claims intensify, international security motivations may increasingly favor closure against rivals, raising the possibility of a fragmented ‘splinterverse’ rather than a unified global metaverse.