Meta Quest Hits Record Usage in 2025 Despite Layoffs

The Meta Quest platform has achieved its highest-ever user engagement levels in 2025, a year marked by significant financial investment and strategic shifts for the company. More than one hundred individual titles have now surpassed the milestone of generating over $1 million in gross revenue, signaling robust commercial activity within the virtual reality ecosystem. This growth comes even as Meta’s broader Reality Labs division, which houses these efforts, reported substantial annual losses alongside its revenue.

During a recent industry presentation, Meta’s director of games, Chris Pruett, detailed the company’s ongoing commitment. He emphasized that investment in VR and Quest games “remains very high,” pointing to new hardware, expanding audiences, and upcoming game titles. Pruett acknowledged the presence of competitors but stated that Meta remains the world’s largest investor in VR by a considerable margin. This declaration follows a period that included studio closures and layoffs, underscoring a complex backdrop for the segment’s record performance.

Financially, the ecosystem showed positive momentum in key areas. Revenue from in-app purchases grew by over 10% year-over-year, with premium app sales acting as the primary driver. The number of apps earning at least $500,000 from these purchases increased by an impressive 20%. Subscription revenue also saw double-digit percentage growth, though it remains a smaller component of the overall business and is largely separate from gaming content. The Meta Horizon+ subscription service itself passed one million subscribers, distributing close to $20 million to developers in its network.

Pruett also addressed a notable platform change: the removal of the social experience Horizon Worlds from the main Meta Horizon storefront in June. He explained the original decision was an experiment based on a specific hypothesis about improving device retention. After a year of testing and data analysis, the company concluded the hypothesis was not proven. “The cycle of experiment-learn-adjustment is typical for Meta,” Pruett said. He noted that developer feedback on the store’s composition was a significant factor in the decision to change course, reinforcing a message of responsiveness to the developer community.

This approach of iterative testing and adjustment, even when it leads to reversing a prior decision, frames Meta’s strategy as it navigates the costly process of building the VR market. The record usage and revenue figures demonstrate tangible traction with consumers, providing a counterpoint to the division’s well-publicized financial losses and internal restructuring.