Heineken launches real-life metaverse bar where you can’t get a drink

Virgin Radio

5 Apr 2022, 08:31

Heineken is opening a bar in London’s trendy Shoreditch, but it won’t be serving drinks of any kind. 

The pop-up bar, which will be open for one night only on 7th April, celebrates the launch of Heineken Silver, a new extra-refreshing, premium 4% lager. The new product is all about “challenging fakeness” and “poking fun at the current craze to launch products in the metaverse”. 

And so, the world’s first “IRL” metaverse bar, the Meta-bar, is opening, to serve “digital beers that can’t be drunk”.

Heineken Silver was initially ‘brewed’ virtually in 3D platform Decentraland as a self-aware idea that satirises how companies “are jumping into the metaverse with products that are best enjoyed in the real world.”

Now, taking the satirisation of launching products in the metaverse even further, Heineken Silver’s real-life metaverse bar in London is probably the only bar in the world where you won’t be able to get a drink. What you will get, however, is a full-on metaverse experience, as the pop-up bar is totally inspired by the virtual world. 

The Heineken Silver IRL Meta-bar will have a blocky, pixelated appearance, and the staff will act like non-playable characters (NPCs). And if that’s not meta enough for you, then all punters will be given some seriously low-tech ‘virtual reality’ headsets to wear. 

However, anyone who turns up for this IRL metaverse experience will be able to have their thirst quenched after all. Once they have visited the entirely beer-free bar, they will then be able to head to a “very special” venue next door to have an actual drink of Heineken Silver. 

Tickets for this event at Protein Studios in Shoreditch, East London are free, and there will be a series of live acts and performances throughout the night. There will also be complimentary food and beers too... just not in the Meta-bar! 

If this sounds like your cup of tea, or rather your glass of cold beer, then you can register for tickets here.