One of the biggest names in social gaming is now officially on the official Quest Store, launching out of App Lab starting today. Roblox is home to tens of millions of daily users and user-generated experiences, casting a clear shadow on Meta’s own social VR platform, Horizon Worlds.

Update (September 27th, 2023): CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Roblox will be available on the official Quest Store starting today, coming out of its two months on App Lab. The company says that you can purchase items within an experience, you won’t be able to buy additional Robux from your Quest device. This functionality is on the way, Meta says. The original article follows below:

Original Article (July 12th, 2023):

A Curious Proposition

Meta confirmed today that Roblox is coming to Quest “in the coming weeks” starting as an Open Beta on App Lab before eventually graduating to a full launch on the main Quest store.

On one hand, the move is a win for Meta. Roblox is one of the most popular social gaming and user-generated content platforms; playing in a similar ballpark with the likes of Minecraft and Fortnite. Getting Roblox onto Quest brings a valuable and recognizable IP to the platform, along with a huge new social graph of non-VR players.

On the other hand, Roblox is very nearly a direct competitor to Meta’s own social VR platform, Horizon Worlds. Both Horizon and Roblox are heavily focused on social experiences and user-generated content. But compared to Horizon, which caters only to the smaller demographic of VR players, Roblox has some 66 million daily active players across Xbox, iOS, Android, desktop—and soon, Quest.

For comparison, that means the number of people playing Roblox every day (66 million) is more than the total number of Quest headsets ever sold (believed to be around 20 million).

So ambitious creators looking to build content for the largest audience (and largest return-on-investment) will see the scale tipped vastly toward Roblox over Horizon.

Whether or not Roblox on Quest will stifle the fledgling Horizon remains to be seen, but needless to say this is an awkward situation. Not just for Meta though; Roblox also represents a looming threat to other social VR applications like VRChat and Rec Room.

Roblox Content Compatibility on Quest

Roblox currently has some 15 million playable experiences for users to choose from, but not all (probably not most) will be suitable to play on Quest.

Meta says the Roblox Open Beta on Quest is a “great opportunity for the Roblox developer community to optimize their existing games for Quest and build new ones for VR while gathering input and feedback from the Quest community.”

That said, Roblox Corp plans to automatically enable VR support for some portion of existing Roblox experiences, though exactly how many is unclear.

“[…] we have automatically updated the Access setting for some of the experiences that use default player scripts to include support for VR devices. We have found that experiences that use default player scripts typically run well in VR without modifications. Automatically publishing these experiences allows us to seed our library of experiences that support VR devices,” the company says in its announcement of Roblox on Quest.

Presently it isn’t clear if or how the company plans to ensure that user-generated Roblox experiences on meet minimum performance expectations on Quest.

Modernized PC VR Support for Roblox

Roblox has offered PC VR support for many years at this point and the company appears committed to continue supporting the platform in addition to Quest.

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Less than a month ago Roblox Corp announced that it would adopt OpenXR to future-proof its VR support, including for PC VR headsets. The update also included improvements to correctly synchronizing the player’s VR playspace and scale to that of the current experience.

Additional reporting by Scott Hayden

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Octogod

    That’s actually kind of awesome. There are some surprisingly great games on that platform!

  • ViRGiN

    I do hope it makes it’s way to PCVR – it’s time to dethrone other awesome PCVR games such as Gorilla Tag, Beat Saber, Killer Klownz, 69 Ways To Kill A Zombie or even The Slopes.

    • guest

      I bet you guys would because a VR version would even grind that to a halt!

    • Mr.Philgood

      Roblox has offered PC VR support for many years at this point and the company appears committed to continue supporting the platform in addition to Quest.

    • Ookami

      Gorilla Tag and Beat Saber are the most played Quest games, but ok.

      • ViRGiN

        So what? Quest is mobile device. PCVR is not. PCVR can run multiple games at the same time, that’s how powerful PCs are, and yet the entire community convinced themselves to never play anything else.

        Gabelicker

        • Ookami

          Is that supposed to be a rational argument, because it literally makes no sense.

          • ViRGiN

            So, you’re just upset that PCVR players on super expensive machines are playing the same games as people on standalone?
            Or what is your point?

            Clearly calling Beat Saber and Gorilla Tag THE most popular PCVR games to date really grinds your gears.

          • Ookami

            LOL I’m just pointing out that their the most popular games on the Quest, because you make out their popularity to be exclusive to pc. You’re the one offended here.

          • ViRGiN

            Anyone who has Quest is likely _very_ aware of that fact.
            However, elitists constantly paint PCVR as the _high end_ of VR, and it’s simply not true.

      • ViRGiN

        To add to the confusion, Quest is the most popular PCVR headset by a long mile!

  • Don’t mind me over here just playing Sonic Speed Simulator on my Quest XD

  • sfmike

    Hopefully this will light a fire under Meta to improve Horizon from the boring mess that it is.

    • Zantetsu

      But why would you want that? If Meta is more successful, then the capitalists are winning! Comrade, you must agree that this is not acceptable!

      • sfmike

        Welcome to my block list troll.

  • Dragon Marble

    I have to admit I never used Roblox, but something ported from flat screen will instantly become a direct competitor to Horizon and VRChat? Really? Can I play paintball or dance with friends in it?

    • Foreign Devil

      You can’t even voice chat in Roblox (for child safety reasons). . this will have as big an impact as Minecraft VR. . . nobody even talks about minecraft VR …

    • Mattphoto

      nope. it will get a decent audience because of the name, but if developers have to customize games for it to get the extra 5% audience, then you won’t see much. Also if kids are playing they are already playing on more flexible platforms. It’s a nice to have. Not a killer app, but a nce win.

  • Oh wow, this is huge

    • Newlot

      I don’t think people realize how big this news is for VR. People always say the main thing holding VR back is software (I partially disagree), now, the most successful mobile game in history is coming to Quest. This on Quest 3 will attract millions of new users, likely to be mainly kids in the 10-18 age range.

  • disqus_o4N8KCTF90

    There are rumours that Sony are now going to allow Roblox on the playstation platform after previously not allowing it due to child safety concerns. If it comes to ps5 I guess we should also see a psvr2 release.

    • Ookami

      If Sony allows it, than they should also start allowing mods for games like Pavlov. They seem to dislike allowing user-generated content though–but then again, we do have Dreams on the platform

      • ViRGiN

        There is no reason to believe Sony prohibit mods for pavlov. Pavlov is the shittiest developer the world has ever seen. Everything he says has no value. He constantly lies. He can’t even finish quest version and put it on Meta store. He can’t even port to pico.

        • Ookami

          You most not be very familiar with consoles. Historically PC has been the only platform to allow mods. Xbox opened up for Fallout and Skyrim, but in a far more limited manner, but I don’t think Sony has allowed mods in any game. If I’m wrong, let me know, because the way I understood it consoles manufacturers are not too keen on modding due to possible copyright infringement and offensive content

          • ViRGiN

            You are wrong. And you could either Google it yourself, or even ask ChatGPT.
            Case on point, it doesn’t matter what Pavlov developer says, cause he has been lying for years and always blaming EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE, but himself and his company.

            Quest release has been delayed by 4 years already, and there is no timeline when it’s actually going to release.

            They switched to PS5 because they were incapable of getting Shack to run on Quest properly. It’s always some engine issues, plugin issues or whatever else.

          • Ookami

            I’m not, and never was, referring to anything Pavlov’s devs said. I’m referring to the fact that mod-oriented games often do not have mod support on consoles. And when they do, it’s very limited.

          • ApocalypseShadow

            Unreal Tournament had mods on PS3. Very good ones I might add. Skyrim, Fallout, Farming Simulator, etc.

            But Sony has mostly pushed for creative freedom built into games like Mods Nation Racers, LBP and Dreams.

            I just don’t think Sony wants to open the doors wide open to some gamers ruining the experience for others. Because we know there are some out there that will just for kicks.

          • Ookami

            I was under the impression it was far less open. I did miss out a on the ps3 era growing up as a poor kid, so maybe my knowledge on it was less accurate than I thought

      • Chris Meeks

        Isn’t that what Rec Room does?

        • Ookami

          I (think) the difference is that Rec Room uses in game assets, but Roblox, and Pavlov mods, can use user-uploaded assets. Which means that, except if deleted by mods, can include copyrighted or “offensive” content (basically anything from gore, to hate-speech, or whatever else).

  • Kenny Thompson

    I guess ports have their place but I really wish there were more made for VR games. They can be so much better.

    • Ookami

      Roblox isn’t a game. It’s a kind of closed engine and storefront with a lot of games of varying quality. There are even made-for-vr games on it.
      I mentioned it in another comment, but one game that’s in development that looks really promising is Ares by PoptartNoahh.

      • ViRGiN

        Lack of weebs and furries certainly makes it far more appealing than VRChat. And people call that “a game” as well.

        • Ookami

          There are significant differences with VRChat and Roblox. Roblox offers far more freedom to make whatever mechanic you want, while VRChat is more limited and is based around making interactive worlds. Roblox is literally made to be an engine and gamestore.

        • BananaBreadBoy

          Ahh yes, Roblox. Famously free of weebs and furries lol.

          • ViRGiN

            100%. In visual appeareance.

  • Ookami

    It had pcvr support back in 2016, but almost no games were made for it. It then got slowly broken, from what I heard, and now it’s fixed. The vr games I tried were jank even by vr standards, but one game I’ve got my eye on is Ares from PoptartNoahh–I urge you to check him out. The videos he released from his game look very impressive (the graphics are actually better than most other VR games)

    • Shuozhe Nan

      Reminds me of ark :(

      • Ookami

        I heard that game had VR support, so I was interested in trying it out, only to find out that it was broken.

  • BananaBreadBoy

    Damn, this is gonna be a huge seller for VR. Though probably not gonna do favors for the influx of kids playing.

    • ViRGiN

      I don’t know man, Gorilla Tag is dominating PCVR. Since when kids are able to afford PCs?

  • Foreign Devil

    YOU CAN”T VOICE CHAT IN ROBLOX! There is no way it’s going to be more popular than RecRoom, Horizon, ChatVR if you can’t even voice chat with other players. Have fun trying to type messages in VR.

  • ApocalypseShadow

    Knowing Zuck, he’ll probably try and buy them out.

  • I still have no idea what Roblox even is. The only time I hear about it involves scams with their pre-paid cards.

  • Foreign Devil

    Can you finally use voicechat in Roblox VR? Because if there is no voice chat like the regular game. . . it can not compete with Meta social platform or Chat VR. Not comparable.