Hello and Welcome, I’m your Code Monkey!

VR is awesome technology! It is amazing to be fully immersed in a world, using your actual hands and body to take actions or just live in that world.

GDC was last week, Meta invited me over as part of their Horizon Insiders program so I spent a lot of time watching talks and researching the current state of the VR industry and development which was something I was very unfamiliar with.

The quick summary is how VR development is easier than ever before thanks to awesome tools, and the industry (while still being niche) has a lot of potential for growth in the coming years.

_{Also quick note, Meta Horizon and Meta Horizon Worlds are two different things! Horizon Worlds is their Roblox-like UGC platform, whereas Horizon is simply their OS that supports their Quest devices and all VR games. Recently they announced Horizon Worlds is switching focus from VR to Mobile, but Horizon OS itself is still VR-focused as always. They are NOT dropping VR! (in fact they announced they're working on new devices) This part was quite confusing to me at first since the branding is all mixed up so I will be making a quick video explaining this.}

In terms of tools, they have actually worked very hard to make things as easy as possible to get started. I remember years ago I did some very light research into it and it required a ton of game objects and all sorts of components just to get a camera working in an empty scene. And nowadays, while it still does require tons of components and game objects, thanks to something called Building Blocks it really is as simple as Drag and Drop to get started.

You just pick something from the list like a CameraRig, drag and drop onto the scene and it automatically adds every game object and every component needed to get it to work. Same thing if you want to add Hand Tracking, or Passthrough, or a Teleport, or a Grab Interaction, all of those are just drag and drop. Press on Play and it just works.

However at GDC they announced an even easier way to get started, using Meta AI you can just describe what you want the scene to be like, and it takes actions on your project to set it all up as you want it. All just using natural language.

Then for testing your VR game, you can test it in editor with the Meta XR Simulator for super fast iteration speed, or of course you can test on device, Unity has an actual Meta Quest build target.

The entire Hello World VR tutorial seems pretty straightforward, then you can easily build your game from there. I will be making a bunch of VR tutorials in the near future, starting with a basic "Getting Started with VR development" which should be fun, I've always wanted to try out VR development!

Then in terms of the state of the VR industry itself, I attended a talk titled: The State of the VR Ecosystem, which was full of interesting stats from the past and estimates for the future. There is a detailed blog post here and the talk video will be published soon.

2025 actually saw record usage for Quest VR despite it being a year with no new hardware launches, that's pretty big news, revenue was flat which matches the rest of the industry. Premium games are still king while IAP and F2P is growing.

Over 100 titles have generated $1M+ in gross revenue in 2025, that's a pretty nice amount! However that's not necessarily just games published in 2025 but rather all games for all time, for example Beat Saber is definitely within those 100. For context, on Steam that number is 363 games published just in 2025, and possibly thousands for all time. Naturally that's a lot higher but for VR which is a pretty niche sub-genre of the games industry it seems to me that 100 games crossing that threshold is a pretty decent amount. It definitely means the industry is NOT dead.

I did try to find out is how viable is VR as an indie game business, and sadly I couldn't really get much of an answer since Meta is very secretive about numbers. Technically a lot of VR games are available on both Meta Quest Store and Steam so we can look at Steam numbers. Something like Gun Club VR has 700 reviews with an estimated revenue of $650k. The leader in this space is definitely the Quest but by how much? Are Quest Store sales 2x that of Steam? 10x? No one knows so it's hard to get an estimate for just how viable VR might be as a business.

Meta Horizon+ is a service that I did not know existed, basically a sort of Netflix for games where you pay a monthly subscription and get access to 2 games per month plus access to a back catalog. This service is also much bigger than I thought with over 1 million active subscribers. Developers are paid out based on usage and minimum guarantees, and they state how the goal with this program is to make it sustainable and profitable for developers, unlike something like Game Pass where some developers have voiced concerns over how viable it is to give out hundreds of games to millions of people for $1 per month. And the fact that Game Pass is now much more expensive kind of proves this point where it is unsustainable.

If you're already a VR developer there is an option to submit your game, although it is an intentionally small curated service so the requirements are relatively high, you can see them in this page where they mention for example requiring average $15,000 monthly revenue and at least one year old.

So in general, the state of VR this past year and in the present is actually pretty solid. VR is not growing by leaps and bounds but it is definitely not dying. Slow but steady growth.

As for the future, this is where things get interesting! It's no surprise that Meta has VR devices in development, nothing officially announced yet but there have been rumors about a Quest 4 alongside a lighter version.

And of course there is a potentially huge event happening in the VR world soon, the Steam Frame will be released! Considering how the Valve Index sold millions of units and the Steam Deck sold even more, there is potential for this new device to open up VR to an even bigger audience.

In terms of audiences they see 3 distinct groups of VR users that each want different things.

In terms of marketing, most users who come to the Quest Store already come with the intent to buy something they saw on social media, they do not browse the store. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are the most important marketing platforms.

So all in all it seems VR is in a decent place right now. It is not growing like crazy but it's also not dying. Meta is still invested in VR and Valve is about to give it another push (maybe Apple will try out as well in the future). There aren't many numbers on what the average game makes so I don't know just how viable it is for an indie developer to make VR games. Technically you have less competition than on Steam, but also much smaller install base, do those numbers end up being a net positive or not? Maybe I need to do some more research on the viability of VR as a platform.

But regardless of financial results, VR is still magical! It's been a few years since I touched VR but when Meta sent me a Quest 3S I went back to it and there really is nothing like it. Beat Saber continues to be one of the most impressive experiences I've ever had, it's fun and physical. SUPER HOT is just straight up "cool", and just browsing the store I can see tons of awesome stuff that I never heard about but definitely want to explore! (the headset came with Batman Arkham VR, I need to play it!)

Are you doing VR development? Are you interested in it? Let me know in the comments or reply to this email!

I'm definitely curious to see the reaction when I publish some VR videos, will the views be 1/10th the usual because it's a very niche area? Or will they actually be higher because a lot of people are interested in VR? I guess we shall see!

Thanks to Meta for flying me out to GDC and sending me a Quest 3S so I can start developing in this magical area!

Thanks for reading! Best of luck in your game dev journey!