Job Simulator sales surpass $3M in less than a year

Austin-based studio Owlchemy Labs announced today that its VR fake job (and burrito-eating) sim Job Simulator generated over $3 million in revenue last year, when it was initially released for the HTC Vive in April and then rolled out across the Oculus Rift and Sony's PlayStation VR.

Fellow VR devs may appreciate this bit of insight into how well the game sold, given that 2016 was a year in which multiple high-profile VR headsets made their commercial debut but many devs struggled to turn a profit on their VR games.

And indeed, Owlchemy seems intent on encouraging fellow devs not to dismiss the potential of the VR market. "We want to share these numbers because we think they’re important to show that even in these early days of VR, if you build a quality piece of content, there’s potential for a large audience and solid sales," reads a company blog post announcing the $3 million sales figure.

Of course, Owlchemy wrestled a bit with how to price a VR game when it initially debuted Job Simulator at $40, then permanently dropped it to $30 two weeks later. Later in the year fellow developer Survios debuted its $40 VR FPS Raw Data and saw it quickly rise to the top of Steam's charts, surpassing $1 million in sales within a month of launch.