Games and porn - the biggest drivers of VR 20.07.2018

Alex Novak

SexLikeReal presents insights into the size of VR games and VR porn markets. Based on the Steam players leak in July, an estimation of the total revenue for 481 VR games titles released since 2016 comes to $50M. Looking at VR porn sales over the same period, we see a similar estimate of $50M total revenue, with around 6,000 VR videos released to date. This data clearly shows that VR games and VR porn are the most significant consumer markets and thus the key drivers of virtual reality.

Thanks to the July 6th Steam players leak it became possible to calculate the approximate revenue of the VR gaming industry’s major distribution platform. The data reveals there are over 3.5M VR player profiles and one game owner could have a number of player profiles for his family and friends. The SexLikeReal team has narrowed down the list to 481 VR titles only, setting the numbers of players and prices alongside the release date. We ended up with an estimation of $50M* for total revenue of VR games released since 2016, the year consumer Rift and Vive headsets were introduced to the market.

It’s interesting to compare that figure with our previous research about the VR porn market in 2017, which saw sales of $18M in gross revenue. Looking at sales over the same period as the data from Steam we estimate a total of $50M with around 6,000 VR videos released to date, with $15M in revenue in 2018.

SexLikeReal is the Steam of VR porn

SexLikeReal’s VR app allows users to purchase and stream adult videos - it is the equivalent of Steam for VR porn. Since its release in 2016, the SLR app has been downloaded by 600,000 users. At the same time, it’s not allowed to be published on any major content platform and needs to be sideloaded from the SLR website. The biggest content platforms, as well as VR content stores, prohibit adult material, and while GearVR and OculusGo significantly complicate the user’s ability to install the app, iPhone and PSVR completely rule out the option to install it. We find it hard to persuade people to install a porn browsing app because of these limitations.

There are around 80 VR adult games on the GameVirt website, which looks to become a Steam-like platform for adult VR games. Most of those games are created by small developer teams who fund themselves through Patreon. That funding is far lower than what mainstream games are used to.

Porn has significant distribution limitations compared to the gaming industry

The biggest porn sites are tube streaming sites with a business model that sets back the whole industry by giving away allegedly stolen content for free, for the cost of watching third-party ads - with little to no money going to the actual content producers. Luckily, the adverse effect of these tube sites is less severe for VR porn. Also, technological limitations mean these platforms are not able to keep up with the quality improvements and subsequent file size increase of VR videos. PornHub’s database of VR porn is three times smaller than SexLikeReal’s. Many VR studios willingly pull their content out of tubes once they have the option.

* While some developers have confirmed the accuracy of the figures, others haven’t, without being specific. We offset the sum of $75M to $50M to represent the following:

Some of these titles were supplied for free with the Vive headset at various times



Some of these titles were purchased during promotional periods and at a discounted price



The prices varied over time



One game owner could have a number of game profiles, for family members, demonstrations, and friends



Games with no achievements did not make it into the list, such as popular BeatSaber, H3VR, and Pavlov

In addition, from 2016 to 2018 the Steam platform was mostly used to deliver content for the HTC Vive headset, but also supported the Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. However, the Oculus Rift recently became the most popular VR headset on Steam. We can estimate that sales over 2016-2018 for the Oculus Home and PlaystationVR content platform were 40M each. This means $130M in total revenue for the gaming industry during the dawn of VR (or the first generation).

SexLikeReal’s VR app allows users to purchase and stream adult videos - it is the equivalent of Steam for VR porn. Since its release in 2016, here.

Alex Novak, SexLikeReal CEO

Gallina James, Head of Marketing