Quest Store Revenue Shifts to In-App Purchases

Quest Store revenue shifted toward in-app purchases between January and September 2026, according to reports about Meta’s developer update. Meta said in-app purchases generated more revenue on the Meta Horizon Store than premium app sales during that period.

Meta also said every app in its top 50 earned more than $1 million after store fees. The reports describe one Meta announcement, not separate updates. VR.org News and UploadVR reported the figures on November 12, 2026, based on a November 10 developer blog post by Chris Pruett, Meta’s director of games.

What Meta’s figures include

Meta described this as the first time in-app purchases became the store’s largest revenue source. It did not publish total revenue from in-app purchases or premium app sales, exact revenue shares, regional results, a headset-by-headset breakdown, or the full top-50 ranking.

The top-50 earnings figure combines app sales, in-app purchases, subscriptions and Horizon+ payouts. Meta generally uses “premium” for games that are not free to play. The reports do not establish how subscriptions and Horizon+ payouts were treated outside that combined ranking, or whether the figures cover only existing Horizon Store devices.

Meta said developers took home hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue during the nine-month period. Revenue was steady compared with the same period in 2025, even without a new device launch. Below the top 50, Meta counted hundreds of apps earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, without stating how many apps that covered or how the money was distributed.

Social games lead in-app spending

Chris Pruett described multiplayer competitive social games as well represented among the leading earners. Examples include HERO x HERO, Gorilla Tag, Animal Company and Yeeps. These games overwhelmingly monetise through in-app purchases, and most are free to download on Quest.

Meta counts HERO x HERO among 12 major new hits launched during the previous 12 months. Pruett said it had become one of the platform’s top earners. UploadVR supplied further context: Gorilla Tag overtook Beat Saber in user ratings in 2022. It later became one of a small group of Quest apps with more than 100,000 ratings, although Animal Company and UG surpassed it in that measure.

A separate group earns mostly, but not exclusively, through premium app sales. It includes FitXR, GOLF+ and Walkabout Mini Golf, along with a desktop streaming utility, a baseball trainer and a fishing game. Fitness titles have historically performed well with subscriptions.

A third group consists of cross-over games popular across audience segments. It includes BONELAB, Blade & Sorcery: Nomad and multiplayer military shooters.

Meta’s premium-game investment

UploadVR reports that Meta invested in premium VR games for years, including first-party releases such as Deadpool VR, Asgard’s Wrath 2, Batman: Arkham Shadow and Armature Studio’s VR port of Resident Evil 4. Ready At Dawn, Armature Studio, Twisted Pixel and Sanzaru Games were shut down. Within became independent and relaunched its exercise app Supernatural.

Of those first-party releases, only Resident Evil 4 appeared on the top-seller chart checked by UploadVR, at number 44. That chart was a live snapshot rather than Meta’s nine-month ranking, so the two lists are not directly comparable. UploadVR also reports that Meta’s best-performing first-party title is Beat Saber, which was already popular when Meta acquired its developer, Beat Games.

Other platform owners have seen stronger returns from premium first-party investments. According to Alinea Analytics, Sony’s God of War: Ragnarok is its highest-grossing title of this generation, ahead of Spider-Man 2 and Gran Turismo 7. Nintendo’s remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time sold 5.2 million Switch 2 units in its first four days. The Switch 2’s best-selling games are Mario Kart World, Pokémon Pokopia, Donkey Kong Bananza and Pokémon Legends: Z-A, all developed or published by Nintendo.

Options for Quest developers

Meta says more than $120 million is committed to third-party games in active development. Half a dozen new titles were announced at this year’s Meta Connect. All are built for Meta VR Glasses, due in spring 2027 with Quest 3 support.

The Quest platform still has the largest hardware install base among VR platforms. Quest 2 is the best-selling VR headset by volume ever, and it will reach end of life at the end of 2027. Meta remains the ecosystem’s largest games funder, although third-party developers have described a broader lack of funding for new projects. Multiple studio heads have cited that shortage when announcing layoffs and closures.

Sinn Studio, Owlchemy Labs, Fun Train, Character Bank, Schell Games, nDreams and Meta have experimented with free-to-play projects. The Binary Mill and Innerspace Studio have continued focusing on premium releases. The Binary Mill shelved its previously announced free-to-play social project Survive The Night.

Several paid Quest apps moved to free-to-play models: AEXLab’s Vail, Triangle Factory’s Hyper Dash, Ramen VR’s Zenith: Nexus and Meta’s Population One. Each saw varying results.

Horizon+ and blended pricing

Meta Horizon+ provides members with a rotating game catalogue for $7.99 per month or $59.99 per year. Among developers in the programme, Meta says 80 percent earn more from MH+ than from the store. The median developer gets more than 70 percent of revenue from Horizon+, while some receive more than 90 percent. Meta did not state how many developers those figures cover.

Horizon+ offers another route for games with paid add-ons and in-app purchases. Walkabout Mini Golf and GOLF+ fit that model. Payday: Aces High launched on Horizon+ with purchasable cosmetics and bundles. A leaked screen reported the previous week suggested a possible rename to Meta VR Plus and the addition of 3D films.

Recent launches show how pricing models overlap. Fast Travel Games launched PAYDAY: Aces High at $24.99 with five $2.99 store items and promised that future heists would be free. Superbright sold In Death: Siege of Heaven for $11.99 after its wave-defense mode had been free inside In Death: Unchained since 2020.

Walkabout Mini Golf costs $24.99 on Steam and has 30 paid add-ons listed on its store page. Schell Games, known for premium releases, announced on October 31 that it had cut about 40 percent of its staff. The reports offer no single route to success for Quest developers as premium sales, subscriptions and in-app purchases increasingly overlap.