In spring 2021, our VR team in CM Games decided to port the PC version of Into the Radius VR to the Meta Quest Store. We released it in September 2022 and had it paid off in a week. Now it’s time to share the details.

This article will be helpful for game developers who are considering porting their games or publishing on Meta Quest Store. We will explain how we came to Meta Quest 2, what issues we encountered when porting the PC version and how we solved them.

Let’s discuss how you can arrange porting in general.

For Into the Radius, we opted for a co-dev model from the get-go for the following reasons:

To sum up, we didn’t have much choice regarding the model. Your experience may differ, but it’s critical to think through your product plans for a few years after porting.

That’s why we chose to collaborate with a potential porting partner. We also encourage you to pay attention to the following points in your selection process:

In our case, we partnered with Snowed In Studios. They are part of Keywords Studios, which is well-known to Meta and a respected service provider globally.

Make all the cuts to reach the target frame rate and see how bad it looks, what the most challenging areas are, and try to figure out if and how you can handle it, at least theoretically.

The Meta Quest Store is a closed and carefully curated platform with high standards for the technical quality of the games released there. The platform determines whether you can release a game in the main store or have to choose others, such as App Lab and Side Quest.

Chances are, if this is your studio’s first VR game, and you don’t have other platforms where your game already runs great, it’s easier to release it to the App Lab first, collect data, iterate the product, and then pitch it to the main store.

The game was doing well on Steam and it helped us in making contact with Meta. We got contacts, met the people in charge, and prepared a pitch deck with all the data and plans we already had. And we held several face-to-face meetings.

We chose this option because we’ve already had success on Steam, selling over 100,000 copies and getting highly positive feedback. We outlined our goals in the pitch deck, after which Meta representatives expressed doubts about the possibility of 1-to-1 porting. But we were able to convince them, thanks partly to thorough communication and the choice of a porting partner.

In September 2022, Meta Platforms released about 5-10 games monthly to give each product its time in the limelight. That’s why platform representatives want to ensure you deliver on time and with high quality.

Porting a live game is more complicated than a finished one. You need to prepare the original version, merge the original and the ported versions, then control both streams. For a better workflow, communication is key.

After six months of porting, we were allowed to announce that we were preparing a Quest 2 version of the game with a teaser. The release window was still considered September, but in most cases, we are not allowed to announce any dates until certification is complete. The public announcement also included information that there would be a closed Beta.

We announced the beta at the end of the teaser. Players had to open a landing page and leave an email to sign up for testing to participate. 

It was a fully functional version of the game with all the necessary content, with most of the team’s efforts focused on performance improvements and bug fixes. We decided to divide the beta access into several waves with an increasing number of participants in each wave, starting with 20 select users from the core community and ending with 2,000 in the next waves.

The beta was also critical for us to answer questions from the community and potential buyers. For example, does the trailer reflect the actual gameplay? Is the game truly a fully-featured Into The Radius? The beta release gave users enough information to alleviate any concerns.

Before your game can be released to the store, it must pass the official certification process. By the start of the process, you supply a complete build, and the designated quality assurance vendor tests it for compliance with the Virtual Reality Checks (VRCs). All bugs are logged and must be addressed in a timely manner or requested to be waived by your project’s curator.

Two VRC points usually cause the most problems. First, it’s performance — there should not be long FPS drops during the game. And second, the progress of the game should not be blocked in any way.

Also, remember that all marketing assets and the store page must be approved and ready several weeks before the release. The earlier you have everything ready, the more leverage you have to publish the page if the certification goes perfectly. The earlier you publish the page, the more time you will have to affect traffic using marketing tools.

Porting Into the Radius to Meta Quest 2 was a challenge because of our business model of free updates, the game’s scale, and complexity. But it turned out to be justified financially, and in terms of audience response. It can be a much easier process for simpler games or games with a different structure, requiring much less investment.

In any case, if you are considering porting your game to Meta Quest 2, ask yourselves these questions:

Then choose a porting approach and present everything to Meta. If they are interested, decide whether you will do it yourself, find a partner, or use a mixed scheme as we did.

Once again, communication is key to the success of multi-stakeholder projects. Not only do you need to make a great product, but you need to do it on time and with well-delivered communication.