Popular social gameVRChathas secured a significant amount of funding that will be used to build upon and expand the service. The team hopes to grow the platform and continue supporting community development.VRChatis a user-generated content-reliantsocial platform that, despite its name, can be played with or without virtual reality equipment. The platform is built around letting players create their own experiences and share them with the community.
VRChat Inc. plans to use the funding to expedite the development of a creator economy, which would allow players to sell user-generated content in an in-game marketplace. The team also would like to expand the service to other VR platforms, as well as adding a social discovery system to allow users to more easilydiscover the best VRChat worlds. These changes are mainly focused on improving the community experience, and expanding to other VR platforms will open up more opportunities for VR players of every level to join the community.
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VRChat’s status as a social platformmeans social functions are very important for its player base, which hovers at around 40,000 concurrent users, so it is understandable that the team behind the game would look to improve the experience. With the additional funding, the developers will be able to continue adding new features and hosting the servers. The free-to-play nature ofVRChatmay have made the platform a success, but for a relatively small company seeing so many users at a time, seeking investment opportunities to support further development is an understandable action.
The nature of VRChat being more of a social platform than a game has lead to a wealth of user-generated content which is really what helps make the platform tick. As such, seeing the team behind VRChat focus on community development means the platform is in good hands, as the community grows and more worlds are created every day to explore. The focus on community content is refreshing to see in a live service game as other live service games such asPokemon GOmake the experience worse with updates.
Players worried that this investment may be leading up to an acquisition likely need not worry, as nowhere in the press release does VRChat Inc. state that an acquisition is in the future, and VRChat Inc. is not a publicly-tradeable company. Contrary tothe concerns around Roblox going public, VRChat Inc. appears to care more about the community than about profits, at least so far in its life.
