The GDC 2025 show floor had a much smaller crowd of VR developers than last year. The Meta booth was crowded with hopeful indie devs aiming to join Oculus Publishing or get some of that $50 million Horizon Worlds grant money. But most established publishers didn't pay for booths. Given the current "VR visibility crisis," I found that quite telling.
On Monday, XR industry vet Jim Squires led a panel called "Solving VR Gaming's Visibility Crisis: Strategies for Reaching Mainstream Audiences," which included the publishers behind Moss and Ghosts of Tabor, a VR marketing CEO, and IGN's executive editor.
The panel highlighted the major dip in revenue that VR developers are experiencing, both on the Quest Store and other platforms. Meta's Oculus Publishing lead addressed this criticism in a later GDC 2025 talk, claiming Meta's store changes had a "very small" impact on developer profits.
This panel took a different stance, as they explained how the money well and marketing support from these platforms dried up, leaving them to fend for themselves.
But that doesn't mean the devs behind the best Quest games are giving up, either. This panel highlighted the new ways developers will try to reach VR gamers, sidestepping the Quest Store or other VR platforms entirely for discoverability.
From millions in ad support to being ignored
Polyarc publishing director Lincoln Davis shared how Sony initially took them under their wing with incredible publicity and support, recognizing that Moss would exhibit to the masses how cool VR could be.
Sony took a "shotgun approach," reaching everyone from hardcore gamers to casual non-gamers. Moss got a major E3 slot and was included at road shows, concerts, baseball and football games, store activations, billboards, Black Friday and NFL commercials, and major social media pushes, with on-the-go demos available to show people what the game (and VR) was about.
Ultimately, Davis estimates they've gotten about $42 million in ad support from publishers across multiple platforms.
But after those glory days of reach where quality meant attention, the VR platforms wanted "direct measurement" of the "return on investment." These platforms left behind the "three-steps-removed" mainstream crowds while retailers like Gamestop and Best Buy started removing the headsets that let "normal" people try VR for themselves.
Instead, Sony refocused all its marketing on the serious gamer crowd, which had already had inroads; it generally hasn't given the PSVR 2 the same level of attention as the original, which multiple panelists bemoaned. Meta, meanwhile, prioritized PR for the hardware, or for self-owned games like Beat Saber or Supernatural.
Of course, as IGN's executive editor Ryan McCaffrey explained, it's "very much an uphill battle" to get their core audience to click on articles about VR games, especially "original IP." Outside of well-known franchises like Batman: Arkham Shadow or Alien: Rogue Incursion, gamers won't engage with VR content. Whether it's Sony or devs themselves, relying on the gaming press to reach your audience may not work.
Adjusting to Meta's new policies
Long-time VR developers used to be able to count on prime Quest Store placement at launch to help them reach out to initial customers and build up reviews and momentum. Now, Squires says, store placement is no longer the "be all, end all," and he asked Maeva Sponbergs, head of publishing and CMO at Beyond Frames, how they're reaching out to audiences without being "dependent on" the Quest Store for visibility.
Sponbergs likened VR's current "discoverability problem" to what happens on Steam, the iOS App Store, and the Android Play Store. The Quest 3 and Quest 3S remain the only viable option for VR devs to make money. However, now that pretty much anyone can put their game on the Quest Store, it's harder for any one game to stand out and earn a piece of the pie, no matter how good it is.
So now, Beyond Frames has had to "switch over focus really, really quickly, using old and tried methodologies and trying to acquire users off the platform." They looked at everything from Pinterest to Facebook ads to target the older, non-gaming crowd for family-friendly fare while focusing on Reddit and Discord outreach for serious shooters like Ghosts of Tabor.
Polyarc's Davis agreed that they had to look at both core gamer outreach and unconventional marketing to keep Moss profitable years later. They're paying influencers to share games with younger audiences that don't don't use traditional media to decide what to play.
And for older audiences, they're actually reaching out to book and wine clubs that might all decide to try games together, leading to "great clickthroughs" and "great comments" for an older title that wouldn't stand out on the store.
Most interestingly, in my mind, Polyarc, Beyond Frames, and other VR devs formed a "cross-studio collaboration" where they pushed each other's games on social media and storefronts. They even provided major discounts — up to 75% — to their partners' games, without requiring that people buy their games first. It led to a "huge increase in not only revenue but also unit sales."
An uncertain future for VR games
VR devs who got in on the ground floor are struggling with deflated sales, but they still have built-up reputations, old profits, or VC investments to fund new ventures and relationships with the major platforms that they can leverage while they look for alternative profits. A smaller VR studio without critical acclaim and resources will have more of an uphill battle.
Both IGN's McCaffrey and marketing expert Stephanie Greenall suggested a key way to raise awareness of VR games is to hide the fact that it's virtual to begin with. Devs who don't have a famous IP to rely on need to look for a "hook" that'll attract people's interest and do well in headlines because, otherwise, gamers won't pay attention.
That's why I suspect we'll see more small developers trying to use TikTok, Twitch, or Instagram to attract the growing teen crowd on Quest headsets, aiming to win over influencers and streamers to get their games on the map.
I'm also curious if more developers will try to band together to support each other's games. But given the lack of VR devs on the GDC show floor, I'm curious whether some of them will take an every-dev-for-themselves approach, instead.
Update: Polyarc's Davis reached out to clarify that Sony (not Meta) included Moss in NFL ads, and that they provided discount codes to partners' games without requiring purchase first (as I mistakenly suggested). I apologize for the errors.
