Meta Quest usage reaches “all-time high” in 2025 despite studio closures and layoffs

Meta Quest usage hit “an all-time high” in 2025, with more than 100 titles generating over $1 million in gross revenue.

At this year’s GDC Festival of Gaming, Meta’s director of games Chris Pruett discussed how the company continues to invest in VR despite studio closures and layoffs. He also covered the segment’s performance last year.

For context, Meta’s Reality Labs division generated $2.2 billion in revenue in 2025, reporting a $19.2 billion loss.

In-app purchase revenue grew by over 10%, with premium app sales as the largest revenue driver. The number of IAP apps reaching $500,000 or more in revenue increased 20%.

Revenue from subscriptions also increased by “double-digit percentage points,” though it still accounted for only a relatively small part of the overall ecosystem and remains mostly unconnected to video games.

Meanwhile, the Meta Horizon+ subscription service surpassed one million subscribers and paid out nearly $20 million to participating developers.

“Our investment in Meta Quest and games for Quest remains very high,” said Pruett. “We’ve a lot going on – new hardware, new audiences, new games. And though we have some welcome competition, Meta remains the biggest investor in VR in the world by a large margin.”

Pruett also addressed the removal of Horizon Worlds from the Meta Horizon store this June.

“The decision to include Worlds in the Store was based on a hypothesis that it would increase device retention,” said Pruett.

“After a year of collecting data, experimenting with different landing pages (and making all kinds of other improvements), we concluded that our hypothesis about Worlds’ impact on device retention had not been proven out.”

He added: “The cycle of experiment-learn-adjustment is typical for Meta. We are cautious not to make assumptions we cannot prove, and when our assumptions are disproved, we change course.

“But it’s also important for our developer community to understand that we are listening, and their feedback on this particular aspect of our Store played a significant role in our decision making.”