Google-owned XR studio Owlchemy Labs has announced that its VR hit Job Simulator (2016) has surpassed 6 million installs.
Job Simulator is one of the most successful VR games of the past decade, and while it didn’t really have a solid foothold back in 2016 as a launch title for the original HTC Vive, PSVR, and Oculus Touch, it also pioneered many of the fundamentals that VR developers rely on today.
In other words, the Reckless Simulator parody was one of the first to truly pull off VR object interaction while offering immersive, room-scale gameplay.
And while the majority of its 6 million installs are expected to come from its early days as a chart regular, it wasn’t until the beginning of 2020 that Job Simulator officially went platinum and sold more than 1 million copies.
By then, Job Simulator has already found its next wave of success on Quest, before coming to PSVR 2 and Apple Vision Pro in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
Of note, while it may not be far off, installation numbers may not directly reflect units sold, which is clearly a more direct measure of success to consumers.
In 2016, Job Simulator was included free with HTC Vive for a limited time, but this may count as an install rather than a sale. In March 2025, it was also incorporated into Meta’s Horizon Plus subscription game service, allowing Quest users to download select titles and keep them for as long as they are a subscriber. This is another place where studios may feel confident in counting installs rather than sales.
Another place is the VR arcade. In 2024, leading software distributor SpringboardVR said Job Simulator was the best performing game due to its popularity with children and VR beginners. And those arcades didn’t buy Job Simulator. SpringboardVR is a game subscription service with an enterprise-focused licensing structure.
In addition to this news, Owlchemy Labs announced that its free-to-play multiplayer quest game Dimensional Double Shift has surpassed the 1 million download mark just over a year after entering open beta. The studio noted that the job sim-style social game has recently become its fastest-growing title, with players logging a total of 2.5 million hours since the start of open beta in September 2024.
