I think this is the premise of 1995 Sci-Fi channel classic CARVER'S GATE -- in a grim future where the planet's ecosystem is ruined and its remaining inhabitants struggle to survive, anybody who can afford spends all their time inside their VR helmets living out escapist fantasies.

The motivating issue in that film is that a bunch of people play video games, a scientist invents a tool that allows the Doom monsters to come back to earth, and a QA engineer has to hunt them down before they destroy the remaining shreds of humanity. That part is of course unrealistic but otherwise the Metaverse narrative plausibly matches this Michael Parée classic.