What happened to VR games in 2025?
Also: 2025 in most-streamed games and lots of discovery news!
[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
New week, new problems, huh? Well, one problem you won’t have to worry about is what to do for the next few minutes. (Even if you don’t care about VR games, since we have plenty of other discovery & platform goodness for you…)
Before we start, we’re glad we don’t have go to CES in Las Vegas (4,100+ exhibitors and 148k+ attendees!) But ex-Microsoft exec Steven Sinofsky has done his customary giant round-up of CES 2026 which showcases everything from ‘ambient computing’ to body telemetry using sweat. (Also, 3D printed chocolate?) Not games, but fascinating.
[FREE DEMO OF GDCo PRO? You too can get a gratis demo of our GameDiscoverCo Pro company-wide ‘Steam deep dive’ & console data by contacting us today - ~85 orgs have it. Or, signing up to GDCo Plus gets the rest of this newsletter and Discord access, plus more. ]
Game discovery news: hi, ExeKiller, Far Far West?
Let’s start things out by taking a look at notable game platform & discovery news, like the following:
Notably, GDCo Pro’s ‘trending wishlist counts for unreleased Steam games’ chart for Jan 5th-12th are headed by some hot ‘usual suspects’ (Forza 6, Phantom Blade Zero) & another Bongo Cat user-incented title (Tap Tap Loot), but the Cyberpunk-y ExeKiller (#4) got a new gameplay trailer which really boosted interest.
Also charting? Co-op 'robot cowboy' shooter Far Far West (#6) has a popular playtest and is trending handily, and brand-new 2D pixel action platformer Inari (#7) got hyped due to its Katana Zero/Nine Sols adjacency. (And Asian-dev life sim Heartopia (#5) launched on mobile, but not Steam yet.)
Fortnite’s custom island-based IAP just rolled out, involving “both ‘consumable’ and ‘durable’ categories of user-generated items” set by devs just for their own levels, and we’re already seeing the Fortnite version of Steal A Brainrot adding “$45 premium item bundles and a chance-based roulette wheel.” (Loot boxen are back?)
The journos at PC Gamer have some suggestions for Steam to improve in 2026, including 5-star review ratings (instead of thumbs up/down), system specs added to player reviews, better price tracking, HowLongToBeat integration, more granular Steam library UI, and more wishlist controls and sublists.
The 28th annual Independent Games Festival announced its nominees, and walking sim (literally!) “Baby Steps has… five nominations”, leading all nominees, with Blippo+, Titanium Court, Angeline Era, Horses, and Perfect Tides: Station to Station also all nominated for the Grand Prize. (Lots of coolxweirdness in here.)
ICYMI, ‘cos we did: this great YouTube video on successful TikToks for indie games: “I analyzed 100+ viral indie game TikToks to find out what actually drives wishlists, followers, and hopefully eventually sales.” And yes, there’s a giant spreadsheet, yum.
The New Game Plus streaming showcase (trailer-only 2.5 hours version, ‘cos people said it was too podcast-y?) happened late last week, and here’s a list of all the 40+ games announced or with new trailers in the nearly 4 hour-long (!) showcase. (Decent line-up, including titles like ExeKiller which wishlist-trended as a result.)
The Polish government put out a new report on the state of its game biz (which it claims is joint #2 in Europe by workforce size.) One interesting stat: the Top 200 (unreleased game) Steam wishlists in July 2025 had 17% U.S. games, 8.8% Canada, 7.65% Japan, 7.5% Sweden, 7.14% Germany, 6.76% UK, and Poland #7 with 6.12%.
Another Steam platform CCU high at the weekend: “The PC game platform has officially reached the 42 million mark with 42,042,778 concurrent users”, up from 41.66m the previous weekend, “[and the] in-game peak now sits at 13,399,958.”
Microlinks: SteamOS mini-announces at CES - Legion Go 2 support announced… wide support for ARM hardware coming soon; 2025 was ‘the worst year on record’ for Xbox consoles in the UK; the IGDA Foundation is looking for DLC to feature for a Mar-Apr Steam sale (with a charity split to fund their programs & rewards).
What happened to VR games in 2025?
It’s ironic that we have been planning to look at the - sometimes underdiscussed - VR game market for today’s newsletter, just in time for Meta to plan ~10% layoffs in its Reality Labs business, centered on “virtual reality headsets and [Horizon Worlds]”, and with first-party game studios like Twisted Pixel and Sanzaru (Asgard’s Wrath series) being shut down.
Given stalwarts in the space like Cloudhead Games (Pistol Whip) are also reducing staff by 70%, you can see that, for many, the VR space isn’t in rude health. But there are still millions of people playing and spending in the space. So who are they, and how do we find this out?
One thing that not everybody has spotted is that Meta has relatively transparent web charts for the Quest (by far the biggest VR market by share!), including top-grossing games for the week and most-played apps for the week. Reddit user AkiaDoc has been compiling these into a weekly spreadsheet and posting screenshots on Reddit. Here’s a ‘top revenue’ example from Dec. 17th which gives you a general idea of the ‘vibe’:
For those not paying attention, we can see a few trends in here, very openly discussed by Meta’s Chris Pruett in a GDC 2025 article/talk, which continue forward:
‘Gorilla Tag’-like free-to-play games have been dominating the charts: you know chaotic tween magnet Gorilla Tag. And also its immediate successor Animal Company? But how about UG or, uh, horror variant Scary Baboon? And Yeeps, a rare non-animal entry! These sandbox, voicechat-y F2P titles all did great in 2025.
First-person ‘simulator’ titles have also excelled: again, we presume you might know about first-person sandbox adventure I Am Cat, which has done great for dev New Folder Games. But did you know their other titles, including I Am Security, I Am Monkey, and I Am Bird, all high-rated hits which cost $10-$20?
There’s a core of ‘evergreens’, but not much look-in for new paid games: you’re seeing classic VR titles like rhythm game Beat Saber, combat game Blade & Sorcery: Nomad and physics sandbox Bonelab constantly in the charts. But there’s not massive pickup for most brand-new paid titles.
To look into these trends more, we turned to Cassia Curran, who runs the Curran Games Agency, which has helped get funding for a number of VR games, and put out a handy F2P VR market report ($) in October 2025.
Curran notes in that report: “Quest users now spend around 70% of their time in free-to-play experiences”, and passed along this chart of games by active users in Sept, showing even more Roblox-like monkey sandboxes dotting the charts (F2P games highlighted!):
It’s also clear that, a bit like Roblox game portability, younger users on Quest will shift around between games, quick. Curran’s report notes: “August and September 2025 saw two brand new F2P games (Ruffnauts: Planet Pals and UG) enter Meta’s charts shortly after release. By October, UG had even replaced Animal Company as the #1 highest-earning title on the platform.” Friend groups are clearly game-jumpin’ like crazy!
Finally, Cassia pointed out to us that Meta actually has a ‘top-revenue Quest games of 2025’ chart live on their website - removing the need for a bunch of complex analytics we’d tried to do with ‘new ratings’, haha. For the record, the Top 10 for 2025 is:
“Animal Company (F2P), Beat Saber (paid & IAP), Gorilla Tag (F2P), Yeeps (F2P), UG (F2P), Blade & Sorcery: Nomad (paid), Bonelab (paid), Supernatural Fitness (free trial & monthly sub); VRChat (F2P), PokerStars: Vegas Infinite (F2P).”
Looking at the rest of the Top 20 top-grossing in 2025, there’s lots of F2P, plus paid evergreens like GOLF+ and Ghosts Of Tabor in there. But slow-motion gun combat game Hard Bullet is the only ‘new in 2025’ paid title in there at #19. (We’re guessing it sold mid-hundreds of thousands of units at $20 per copy, so maybe $5-$7m net so far?)
That may be disappointing or delightful. But it’s clear that most new games not in the sim, sports, shooter or simian genres have been selling a few thousand units at best on paid VR release in 2025. That doesn’t cover the complex 3D spatial dev needed for VR. (Why? The younger mass audience are happy enough in free, sandbox worlds.)
(A different chart showing the most-used Quest apps of 2025 is headed by Horizon Worlds, Instagram, YouTube, Gorilla Tag, Roblox, Beat Saber, VRChat, and Rec Room, btw.)
Finally, to round out the shape of the VR market: PlayStation VR is definitely an afterthought at this point. (We have Ghosts Of Tabor estimated at <20k units on PSVR after its May 2025 release, compared to 300k on Steam and low millions on Quest.)
And if we filter Steam releases by ‘VR-only’ games across all of 2025, we get the following GDCo estimates, with only four paid titles selling >100k copies (including Gorilla Tag, which is a $20 game on Steam):
So the VR boom isn’t 100% bust. But the market is crowded, and first-parties are pulling back on funding. And Meta’s insistence that it was the way we would be consuming content in the future has morphed into VR as a stepping stone into AR/AI - hence company excitement about expanding output for Ray-Ban Meta Glasses.
Sure, the tech worked on for VR has been important for wearable computing as a whole. But for now, the lack of multitasking and the headset social isolation has stymied VR’s rise. And the idea that large, premium paid blockbuster games might be standalone profitable on these devices? Sadly, not so much…
Which games ruled game streaming across 2025?
Finally, livestream analytics platform Stream Hatchet did get us the Top 100 most-streamed games for Dec. 2025 (Google doc), but honestly, not much big was happening, besides Path Of Exile 2 getting a 36x watch boost to #15, thanks to a new expansion.
However, Stream Hatchet’s Mark Rowland & friends also provided us an ‘all of 2025’ Top 100 list of the most-streamed games (inc. year on year changes!) on non-China streaming platforms like Twitch & friends. Here’s highlights of Mark’s comments on the rundown:
League of Legends claimed the #1 spot with 1.95 billion (!) hours watched: Riot’s MOBA was closely followed by Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V at 1.90b. GTA V may either rise as hype for GTA VI builds, or hours could be split across the two titles when GTA VI releases.
Counter-Strike made great strides in 2025, up 29% to 1.28b hours: at #3, the stalwart shooter actually beat out Valorant, which slipped slightly to #4, with ‘only’ 940m hours streamed. Elsewhere, many other usual suspects - Minecraft, DOTA 2, Fortnite - also fill out the Top 10.
Roblox grew 3.1x to 515m hours watched in 2025: The spark behind this surge to #9 was the phenomenal success of Grow a Garden (with 24/7 market streams driving a lot of this traffic.) But this was only partway through the year, and other Roblox games have picked up the pace too - more room for growth?
Otherwise, for ‘newer’ games, hero shooter Marvel Rivals made it to #14 with an impressive 378m hours watched, 10 spots ahead of Overwatch 2. And ARC Raiders was the highest ‘brand new in 2025’ title at #21, with 241m hours in only two months.
There are a few games also wandering down the charts compared to 2024, for example Apex Legends (down 31% to 274m hours watched) and Rainbow Six Siege (down 27% to 154m hours watched.) But sometimes timing of patches & updates has more to do with this than the overall health of the game. (And sometimes not!) Toodles…
[We’re GameDiscoverCo, an analysis firm based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your PC or console game? We run the newsletter you’re reading, and provide real-time data services for publishers, funds, and other smart game industry folks.]