Job Simulator hits $3m in sales

VR game Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives has made over $3m in sales, developer Owlchemy Labs has announced. It’s also received over 250m YouTube views since its release on April 5th last year.

It’s not yet known how many units Job Simulator has sold, but it paints a promising picture for the current VR scene. Indeed, Sony also announced last Friday that Job Simulator was the best-selling PSVR game of 2016 in the US.

When we started development of Job Simulator, it was a massive risk to bet it all on a project that could ONLY work in VR, especially with consumer VR hardware productization so far off and ambiguous,” Owlchemy Labs CEO Alex Schwartz said in a statement on the developer’s website.

It’s great to finally see the numbers show that even in such an early market, success can already be found. We’re incredibly proud of the fact that our game has struck a chord with so many players across the globe, both young and old.”

Part of its success is down to its spectator mode, which Schwartz says makes it a great fit for streaming services.

I think a huge part of Job Simulator’s success comes from how fun it is to just watch someone play around and be silly in VR” says Schwartz.

Tons of people have seen their favorite YouTuber play around in the physics sandbox that is our game, and that’s great for showing everyone how interactive and magical VR can be. These earliest attempts at mixing real-life video footage with virtual reality are the best way to show people what it truly feels like to be inside of a virtual space so we’re letting streamers and content creators easily share VR footage that’s clear, understandable, and ready for mainstream viewers.”

Job Simulator has now launched on all three major VR platforms. It was first released on the HTC Vive as part of its trio of bundled-in titles in April, and then appeared a few weeks later as one of the launch titles for Oculus Rift. It was also a launch title for Sony’s PlayStation VR when the headset launched last October.