At the start of the New Year Valve has released a look back at 2017’s best selling VR titles on Steam.

Just in time for the end of the Steam Winter Sale (concluding January 4th @ 10AM PT), Valve has published a series of ‘The Best of 2017‘ charts, showing which titles on Steam have fared the best across several metrics. Among the charts is a list of the top 100 best selling VR games on Steam in 2017, as measured by gross revenue.

The chart is broken into tiers ranging from Bronze to Platinum. Refreshing the page shuffles the titles in each tier, meaning we can’t tell directly how individual games in each tier stack up in terms of revenue, we only know that games in a higher tier had higher revenue than games in a lower tier.

Here’s a look at the Gold and Platinum tiers; in an effort to roughly estimate the range of revenues within each tier we’ve estimated total gross revenue (not just 2017) based on data from SteamSpy (assuming MSRP for all sales), and sorted each tier by that figure. It’s also worth noting that some of these titles (like Fallout 4 VR and Tilt Brush) are or were bundled at one time with sales of the HTC Vive, a confounding variable in the total gross estimation.

Platinum

Game Release Estimated Total Gross Owners
Fallout 4 VR 2017 $4,731,120.00 78,852
Arizona Sunshine 2016 $4,721,400.00 118,035
Raw Data 2017 [prev. EA] $4,283,320.00 107,083
Tilt Brush 2016 $4,025,360.00 201,268
Job Simulator 2016 $3,416,940.00 170847
Audioshield 2016 $2,803,640.00 140,182
SUPERHOT VR 2017 $2,561,475.00 102,459
Onward 2016 [EA] $2,409,375.00 96,375
Space Pirate Trainer 2017 [prev. EA] $2,372,865.00 158,191
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality 2017 $1,839,900.00 61,330
Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2016 [EA] $1,557,580.00 77,879
Gorn 2017 [EA] $1,392,080.00 69,604

Looking at the chart against our estimated revenue data, Fallout 4 VR, despite being released less than a month ago, found itself among the top grossing VR titles of 2017 thanks to a relatively high $60 price point and a release surrounded by lots of buzz.

Interestingly, and perhaps worryingly for VR content development, half of 2017’s Platinum sellers were launched in 2016 (or even more than half if we counted Raw Data and Space Pirate Trainer as being launched in 2016 given their Early Access debut that year). This would imply that 2017 hasn’t seen very many VR hits launched on Steam compared to 2016, which itself could mean several different things, but without more data, speculating further isn’t particularly useful.

Gold

Game Release Estimated Total Gross Owners
Virtual Desktop 2016 $2,467,785.00 164,519
Vanishing Realms 2016 [EA] $1,973,120.00 98,656
Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope 2017 $1,508,920.00 37,723
Sairento VR 2016 [EA] $956,460.00 31,882
The Talos Priciple VR 2017 $827,480.00 20,687
Paranomal Activity the Lost Soul 2017 $798,240.00 19,956
Doom VFR 2017 $781,230.00 26,041
Batman Arkham VR 2017 $681,440.00 34,072
Pavlov 2017 [EA] $593,830.00 59,383
I Expect You to Die 2017 $559,750.00 22,390
Dead Effect 2 VR 2017 [prev. EA] $541,500.00 21,660
QuiVr (2016) 2016 [EA] $486,740.00 24,337

In the Gold tier, a smaller portion (25%) of 2017’s top grossing games were released in 2016, suggesting that a number of VR titles released in 2017 are working their way up the charts, but not at particularly accelerated rate compared to 2016.

– – — – –

Looking for 2017’s top VR games across platforms? Check out Road to VR’s 2017 Game of the Year winners.

Update (1/2/18): Indicated that some of the titles in the list of top sellers are or were bundled with sales of the Vive at one time or another.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


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."
  • Luke

    Pavlov deserves more imho.

    • Jason Mercieca

      Pavlov surely deserves to be at equal num as Onward…

  • Miqa

    Impressive that Fallout 4 VR hits the top spot. Should prove to everyone how wanted lengthy titles are in the VR market.

    • Veron

      Only thing this proves is that PC VR is still in a precarious state. Fallout VR is selling mainly because of its name.

      This is why devs are all too happy to accept funding from Oculus in exchange for exclusivity. Profitability is still rather uncertain for many VR devs.

      I mean, no single VR title on Steam has made up to a third of what Cuphead made, for example.

      • Ragbone

        Fallout 4 VR still isn’t finished yet, lots of missing functionality and bugs.

    • ummm…

      wow veron and ragbone really have a bleak view of vr….if only VC and the big tech companies listened to them.

  • flamaest

    Is Lone Echo not on Steam?

    • benz145

      Nope, it’s an Oculus exclusive.

  • impurekind

    I guess the release dates of the most popular games is just testament to the fact that even with a smaller library of VR titles it’s still harder for new VR games to get noticed now that it was a year or two ago, and some of the older titles continue to be popular because they’ve already got a foothold in the charts. So, maybe it goes to the fact that these kinds of digital stores need to figure out a better way of giving the newer and fresher games more exposure and the kind of opportunity for success that most of the earlier released titles basically got by default.

  • Zachary Scott Dickerson

    Wow, such small sales numbers. Many teams are very small, so good money for them… but this is not attracting any big developers any day soon. Though many games are very fun in VR, it’s tough with such a low player base.

    • cusman

      The total number of players with HTC Vive or Oculus Rift or PSVR is pretty low, so with that in mind, the VR sales are pretty healthy.

      I think most VR hardware owners are buying multiple titles so smaller cheaper titles are being commercially viable.

  • Ken P

    Despite these “low” numbers, there’s a few other factors to consider. This is data only taken from Steam. This does not include sales from other online marketplaces where these VR games can be bought or in physical locations such as Gamestop so the sales figures for these games should be higher. Which VR headsets are these statistics referring to? If it is just VIVE, then again the numbers should be higher. Finally high-end VR headsets are dropping in price which will allow more people to try VR games. The more people that have VR headsets, the greater the sales for these games. Once more people try VR, these sales will be higher.