As we head into the New Year, Valve has released a look back at 2018’s best selling VR titles on Steam.

Alongside the ongoing Steam Winter Sale (concluding January 3rd @ 10AM PT), Valve has published a series of ‘The Best of 2018‘ charts, showing which titles on Steam have fared the best across several metrics. Among the charts is a list of the top 100 best selling VR games on Steam in 2018, as measured by gross revenue.

The chart is broken into tiers ranging from Bronze to Platinum. Refreshing the page shuffles the titles in each tier, meaning we can’t tell directly how individual games in each tier stack up in terms of revenue, we only know that games in a higher tier had higher revenue than games in a lower tier.

Here’s a look at the Gold and Platinum tiers; since Valve is sorting each tier in a random order, we charted each title’s overall user reviews and sorted by that figure to bring a bit of order to the groups.

Platinum

Game Release Positive User Reviews
Beat Saber 2018 [EA] 97%
GORN 2017 [EA] 97%
Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2016 [EA] 97%
Onward 2016 [EA] 91%
Pavlov VR 2017 [EA] 89%
SUPERHOT VR 2017 89%
Arizona Sunshine 2016 86%
Job Simulator 2016 84%
Skyrim VR 2018 82%
OrbusVR 2017 [EA] 81%
VR Kanojo 2018 75%
Fallout 4 VR 2017 71%

Games in the platinum tier are mostly expected; though it’s interesting to see that 50% of this year’s platinum titles are in Early Access, slightly up from 42% last year. Interestingly, none of the platinum games are Early Access graduates (compared to 25% in the gold tier).

While the titles in platinum are mostly expected, the one that surprised us is VR Kanojo (2018), a relatively pricey ($50) adult VR game which was released in 2017 but hit Steam this year.

Despite relatively low reviews, Fallout 4 VR (2017) continues to sell well thanks to its highly recognized IP. It’s Bethesda brethren, Skyrim VR, also joins the platinum list having launched on PC earlier this year.

Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades takes platinum its second year running, and stands out for not only being launched initially back in 2016, but also for its exceptional user reviews.

In the platinum tier, 33% of titles were released in 2016, 42% in 2017, and 25% in 2018. It might seem surprising that only 25% of the titles were released in 2018, though the bulk of the non-VR platinum list is shared between 2018 (25%) and 2015 (25%).

Gold

Game Release Positive User Reviews
Space Pirate Trainer 2017 [prev. EA] 95%
Tilt Brush 2016 95%
I Expect You To Die 2017 92%
Sairento VR 2018 [prev. EA] 90%
Sprint Vector 2018 90%
Raw Data 2017 [prev. EA] 87%
STAND OUT: VR Battle Royale 2017 [EA] 77%
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality 2017 74%
Budget Cuts 2018 73%
Zero Caliber VR 2018 [EA] 73%
Virtual Desktop 2016 69%
DOOM VFR 2017 59%

In the gold tier only 17% of titles are in Early Access (compared to 50% in the platinum tier). That’s down considerably compared to last year’s gold tier in which 33% of games were in Early Access. Additionally, 25% of this year’s gold tier are Early Access graduates.

Following a similar pattern from Fallout 4 VR and Skyrim VRDOOM VFR continues to see steady sales thanks to its recognizable IP, apparently despite decidedly mixed reviews. This is the game’s second year in the gold tier.

In the gold tier, 17% of titles were released in 2016, 50% in 2017, and 33% in 2018. That compares similarly to the non-VR gold tier in which 42% of titles were released in 2017.

– – — – –

Check out the full list of Steam’s top selling VR titles in 2018 to see which games made it into the Silver and Bronze tiers.

Looking for this year’s top VR games across platforms? Check out Road to VR’s 2018 Game of the Year & Design Award winners.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Jistuce

    VR Kanojo had embarrassingly long legs. I was surprised at how well it did.

    • NooYawker

      Porn is always on the forefront of all new tech. If they made decent porn games they’d dominate the top 10.

      • jj

        they allow some pretty mature games and theyre not leading the charts right now. Porn games have never dominated and i dont think they ever will.

        • NooYawker

          They’re probably badly made. Why else would this kanajo be in the top 10.

        • Jistuce

          Except in the japanese PC games market, which was largely founded on porn, and never got over it.

    • Blufor

      Its simply the best in its category so far, it may be abit meh, but once they refine this genre of VRporn you can bet anything it will sell well!

  • NooYawker

    Has anyone tried OrbusVR?

    • Man, I’m wondering the same thing. I mean, I’m interested in the MMO aspect, but the game looks like a damned Final Fantasy clone (turn based combat), which I’m not at all a fan of, instead preferring real-time combat. But otherwise, yeah, it’s had my attention too, and really I’m hoping we see a lot more emerging in the MMO space for VR in 2019.

      • Boris

        What are you talking about? Turn based combat? you are wrong it’s not turn based at all

        • ok, so I’m wrong. The screenshots and description didn’t really make it clear though, hence I said that ‘it looks like’ (meaning, my perception of it). If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. Big deal.

    • nasprin

      I tried it a few months ago, the graphics are a Little bit too simplisitic, but the gameplay is solid and very nicely refined. What turned me off was the low playerbase for an MMORPG and the real-life challenges – as any MMORPG it requires some time to play.
      But it was obvious, that it was build from scratch for VR – and that was seriously awesome.

  • David A Bacher

    Fallout VR has been being given away by HTC, and was a bundle title for the Vive for a good chunk of this year – that’ll move units, even with low reviews, because free is free.

    • benz145

      It’s unclear if those units would have counted toward revenue by Steam, but you’re right that it’s a variable worth considering.

      • Jistuce

        Actually, the banner says “as measured by gross revenue”, so free copies wouldn’t count.

        • benz145

          ‘Free’ copies in bundle deals are never free, they’re just free for the end-user. Typically some partner company will pay the game developer for a certain number of copies (which are then given to users for free); that could be on an ongoing basis, or a bulk buy up front (in cases of ‘while supplies last).

          These are less than typical deals, and it depends how Valve tracks the data in its analytics. Seems like that for the 2018 top lists they only counted revenue through sales on Steam proper (vs. key redemptions), but without more info we can’t know for sure.

          • Jistuce

            Hence the “never mind” edit. My brain caught up with me a couple minutes after I hit enter.

            It is a real shame this process isn’t more transparent. Companies collect more information than ever, and share less of it than ever.

  • Ahahahah VR Kanojo… it shows us how adult content is always relevant with all technologies

  • Cristianfx

    Contractors VR and Blade & Sorcery!

  • So far, off of the list above, I’ve bought Skyrim VR, Fallout4VR, Pavlov & Onward. All are totally choice titles on PCVR platforms –I’m playing my copies on a Samsung Odyssey+ paired with an Intel i7-8700K, 16GB ram, and an Nvidia RTX2080 8GB. So far, the performance has been utterly stunning.

    Each opportunity… each sale, I’m buying more and more good VR games, spread across PCVR & PSVR. Between the two, I can now keep a fairly fresh selection of choice titles that keep me infinitely engaged.

    I’d already put over 350 hours into Skyrim VR on PSVR, but when I picked up my new system, I bought a new copy to play through again, this time in a much higher resolution, with the ability to addon mods containing new regions and content. As I’m playing through this new version, and gaze out across what appears to now be a lifelike Tamriel that is visible to the horizon, as far as the eye would naturally be able to see, I feel the money was well spent. Both versions are equally excellent, because the PSVR version is so accessible, but the SteamVR version is visually far superior by any stretch.

    Fallout4VR… its good, but I’ve got to find the time to delve further into it. I’ve been so distracted with VRChat lately, it’s not even funny. And Elite:Dangerous (Complete) is probably the most mind blowing sim I’ve ever played in VR. Pavlov is already a big hit here… my son was blown away when he realized that there’s no turn controls, that he was supposed to literally turn his body to turn in the game. We’ve had Onward for a few weeks now and still haven’t had the time to even load it… too much life stuff going on, but I’ll get to it.. soon… but I just picked up Overload, Everspace, and Code51:Mecha Arena (the last of which, I also own on PSVR…. hoping to get some crossplay action going on there).

    • Blufor

      I had to stop because I added mods and well it kept crashing. Playing the base game is like… meh “I’ve already done all this a million times before” feeling. Tho dungeons are much more fun in vr.

  • Hacker4748

    *”Its Bethesda brother”