Hotel Heiress Paris Hilton Starts Metaverse Business on Roblox

Hotel heiress and reality television star Paris Hilton launched her own metaverse business on Roblox on Tuesday.

Hilton is parlaying her success as a celebrity DJ and party host, a role that regularly fetches her $1 million dollars a night at clubs in China, Dubai, and Ibiza.

Now the 40-year-old star is channeling all of those locales — especially Ibiza — into her own virtual island on the online game platform Roblox.

Hilton, who calls her island “Paris World,” has filled the space with a digital replica of her Beverly Hills, Los Angeles home, as well as a special area based on the carnival-themed wedding she had with her husband, Carter Reum in 2021.

Hilton plans on hosting her own New Year’s Eve celebration in Paris World this coming weekend.

“For me, the metaverse is somewhere that you can do everything you can do in real life in the digital world,” said Hilton, who worked to recreate aspects of her glittering, globe-trotting life for fans. “Not everybody gets to experience that, so that’s what we’ve been working together on over the past year — giving them all my inspirations of what I want in that world.”

Following the model of most virtual environments in the metaverse, Paris World will charge users for items like clothing or virtual experiences.

Plot of land in the metaverse sells for $2.4 million dollars

Hilton has embraced the metaverse as the excitement surrounding virtual worlds continues to boom. A plot of virtual land in Decentraland was bought for $2.4 million dollars worth of cryptocurrency just last month.

Decentraland is an online metaverse landscape whose space and items are backed by the Ethereum blockchain. Users participate in this world by purchasing land and things as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with Decentraland’s cryptocurrency MANA.

The Metaverse Group bought the virtual real estate in Decentraland for 618,000 MANA, which is worth $2,428,740. The land is located on a prime location in Decentraland’s world, in the “Fashion Street” section that users hope to turn into a hub for events and commerce. The space is broken down into 116 smaller subsections, each measuring 52.5 square feet.

The sale in Decentraland comes as an influx of excitement and speculation has been directed at the metaverse following Facebook’s rebranding into a metaverse-centered company.

A plot of land in Decentraland had previously sold for 1,295,000 MANA in June, which was then worth $913,228. The buyers had used the land to construct a virtual mall where they sold digital clothing as NFTs.

Facebook’s rebrand to Meta

Facebook unveiled its plan to move past standard social media sites and into the realm of virtual reality with its “metaverse” platform during its Connect Conference last month.

The metaverse (or “Horizon Home,” in its personal version) involves users working, gaming, and communicating in a virtual world with the use of VR headsets.

Mark Zuckerberg, who has spearheaded the shift toward virtual reality, recently announced that the company would hire 10,000 skilled workers from the EU to help construct the metaverse platform.