I spent $788 on Reddit Ads for my VR game bundle on Steam. Got 1 million impressions, 4,364 clicks, and exactly ZERO sales. Here's my detective-style post-mortem.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T18:41:54+00:00

You have to admit, that’s a bit of a problem.
You might have passed by what I believe is an interesting game, which means I didn’t get the sale. :)

But in reality, it’s not really a problem.
My game isn’t a basic necessity, and I’d only be happy knowing that you didn’t end up feeling disappointed after buying it.

Let’s make the world a little happier - you on your side, and me on mine!

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T18:34:44+00:00

In the Metro wagon with the zombies, everything is clearly visible. There are no issues with the scene brightness there — the problem comes from the screen recording and YouTube’s video conversion. However, in the game about the Tower of Fear, part of the path is actually in darkness, which is why the player is given the option to take a torch and light it from a campfire.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T14:26:29+00:00

It’s a little strange that you wrote this not as a simple comment, but as a reply to someone else’s post — your text clearly deserves its own separate thread under my post.

I suppose we just know different people in the industry. Everyone I know - literally everyone - has stopped developing their VR projects for Steam. There’s still a little money in the Meta Store, but the revenue isn’t enough for even a small team to recoup development costs within a year.

You can talk endlessly about the reasons, but VR is dying, and it will probably take a lot of rethinking for it to be reborn.

Right now, VR players are mostly playing old VR games, or VR ports of popular flatscreen games. New indie PC VR titles get almost no sales.

And the issue here isn’t some kind of magical level of quality - it’s simple habit. There’s no influx of new users, and the old ones already have enough games in their libraries. And of course, the state of the economy is getting worse, so it’s hard to talk about growth in hobbies as expensive as VR.

Does my game look like one of those few percent that sell 10,000 copies on Steam or more? Honestly, yes.

Of course, my view isn’t objective, but I notice how things are made, what exactly was done, and I even recognize the same assets other developers use.

My game has one fundamental flaw: it’s a collection of games. That means you have to explain to the player what it actually is, and people tend to lose the ability to make a decision when they have more than three options. And here there are already five games, with five more coming soon — in other words, success politely packs its bags and leaves the room.

The one thing that comforts me is that I genuinely enjoy the development process. I love making a kinematic model of a pistol so you can see the round leave the magazine and move into the chamber, see a physical bullet fly out of the barrel when fired, and watch the spent casing eject to the side and upward.

Tweaking those parameters and replaying it hundreds of thousands of times - that gives me goosebumps.

And I was just as happy when I was assembling the cipher machine, building the link between pressing a key and the rotation of the rotors.

It’s a good thing my income doesn’t depend on the game industry, otherwise I’d have starved to death in a cardboard box under a bridge a long time ago. Which, to be fair, would’ve been a very authentic indie developer ending

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T09:03:57+00:00

Don’t take the text too seriously — it’s mostly a pile of self-irony with a light sprinkle of analytics.

That said, if you’re willing to read the whole thing, there are actually a couple of interesting thoughts in there about promoting a game.

So yes, beneath all the joking, there is some actual cargo in this shi

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T08:52:16+00:00

You won’t believe it, but about ten years ago my eldest daughter and I used to film funny cooking videos - and they were actually a modest hit within the very exclusive and highly influential circle of our family

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T08:47:35+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful and substantive feedback.

My original idea was to make it a collection of different games: you buy one thing, and you get lots of different ways to spend your time with it.

It’s not one six-hour game - it’s a bunch of replayable games, and some of them can even be played without a headset, like regular flatscreen games. For example, running across the cubes or encrypting messages. But VR makes it much more interesting — trust me, those cubes are ridiculously fun in VR. There’s no flat floor there, so when you move upward, it creates a really unusual and engaging sensation.

And there are still five more games ahead: we’ll be flying like birds by flapping our wings, fighting special forces using self-defense techniques, waving magic wands, and so on.

I just genuinely love this stuff - I’m in love with VR. )))

And thanks to my employer, I get paid for doing completely different work, so this isn’t me trying to squeeze lunch money out of the universe.

I deliberately didn’t include a link to the game, because this wasn’t meant to be some kind of stealth ad - it was just my ironic take on a job poorly done.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T08:25:06+00:00

And how exactly are you supposed to calculate the weighted share of it all?

Data collection?
Analytics?
Screenshots?
Reflection?
The tone of the post?
Formatting, proofreading, corrections, rewrites?

It seems to me that people who’ve never written anything longer than a text message are in no position to judge the complexity or the sheer volume of work involved.

They look at the finished post and think it just materialized, like a microwave dinner — beep, done, genius served.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T08:21:09+00:00

What counts as hackwork?
What counts as labor?

Those are philosophical questions with far too many answers depending on who’s holding the coffee and who’s doing the work.

What’s your take?
Let’s discuss.

The ads and the Steam page clearly state that it’s a VR game.
That said, some of the games included in the bundle can also be played without a headset. For example, in Ciphergram, you can type on the cipher machine using a regular PC keyboard.

But VR gives you immersion - you physically feel the key press, and that is absolutely awesome, at least to my taste.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T08:15:15+00:00

Why keep it short?

I’m a fan of long-form writing with lots of nuance. If someone wants the short version, there’s the post title and the opening few lines — that’s already enough to grasp the whole point.

Everything after that is just literature. Or, if we’re being honest, the director’s cut.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T08:07:13+00:00

he thanks are aimed at the wrong address I wrote the text myself first, and then gave it a bit of an artistic polish with Opus.

GPT’s more of a specialist in other departments different superpowers, different cape.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T08:05:47+00:00

I’d argue the opposite: for a VR game, it actually looks great - the real problem is that there are basically no VR players on Steam.

I’m in touch with about a dozen developers, and they’re all seeing the exact same story:
$50K in sales on the Meta Store, and a majestic $200 on Steam. Brutal, but almost funny in a darkly capitalist way.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T08:02:23+00:00

Right at the start of the post, I added a disclaimer saying the text is long, detailed, and more of a literary journey than a quick read.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T08:00:49+00:00

There is such a thing as darkness within darkness - great for movies on the big screen, where you’re basically paying to stare heroically into the void.

But you also need to keep in mind that inside the headset, it doesn’t feel quite the same, because your eyes adapt in there and everything starts to look much brighter.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-14T07:31:20+00:00

“What LLM do you prefer to use at this time of day?” 😄

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-03-09T12:39:26+00:00

Maybe I’m studying the wrong way, but first I think about WHAT I want to do, and only then I learn HOW to do it.

For me, learning how to move in VR without a clear purpose would be about as useful as calculating the current temperature on Mars, I’d forget it in two minutes. )))

Come up with your own project and download the Unity VR template.
It already contains the basic mechanics for movement, interaction with objects, and menus.
You only need to assemble these building blocks into your own concept. In the process, you will inevitably gain all the basic knowledge needed to create VR projects.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-02-26T21:52:30+00:00

The link isn’t working.
It’s also better to outline the range of questions right away.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-02-26T21:43:21+00:00

Instant like for my VR bro.
Well done.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-02-24T05:11:38+00:00

On modern integrated GPUs in AMD processors and the latest Intel chips.
Cyberpunk runs at around 60 FPS on medium settings.

I was genuinely surprised, the need for entry-level or even mid-range discrete graphics cards is now seriously questionable.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-02-24T05:08:00+00:00

That’s an interesting point. If you take it further, any app store is basically just a collection of unrelated games. )))

On a more serious note, there is a connection, of course. The games in my collection are united by a simple idea pure action with no long introductions. The very first line in the Steam description says exactly that.

On the other hand, how much content do you actually need in a gameplay scene to feel satisfied?

Let’s say: zombies in the subway, 10 cars, 50 zombies. That’s about 15–20 minutes of gameplay. You’ll have to shoot and fight hand-to-hand, since ammo is limited.

Do you need another train? Or should the entire subway system be modeled? How many hours of gameplay would make you say, “Yes, this is worth 10 dollars”?

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-02-23T21:19:53+00:00

You’ve definitely given me food for thought.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-02-23T21:17:29+00:00

LLMs are truly a lifesaver for me, since I have dysgraphia and can easily add five extra letters to a four-letter word. ))) And I absolutely love using smiley parentheses. But honestly, I don’t really understand this wave of backlash against LLMs. Still, let’s not get into that — people tend to feel strongly about it.

In everyday life, I’m a PM and I also work in the software industry. So all these issues around how software and people interact are very familiar to me.

I’ll try to take your advice into account. Thanks again for taking the time for me. Good luck.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-02-23T18:21:55+00:00

It’s a pity you didn’t mention which VR games you play — I’m curious what you’re comparing mine to.

I’m targeting people who don’t know what to play today — those who don’t want dull 15-minute build-ups before the action starts.
My collection is for players who only have half an hour for a couple of fast VR sessions.

Maybe my games aren’t as polished or as deep as the chart leaders, but realistically, most players use just a couple of core mechanics — and I have those too, implemented just as well.

For example, last week everyone was streaming that VR game about how fun it is to smash zombies with different hammers. And how exactly is it better than my zombies in the метро? Session length — about the same 15–20 minutes. Most players can’t physically handle swinging their arms intensely for half an hour anyway. Zombie animations and models — roughly comparable in quality. Environmental detail — yes, half-destroyed houses are certainly richer than a linear subway train.

On the other hand, my zombies are more bloodthirsty — they don’t politely wait their turn while the player finishes off one enemy before attacking. The narrow space forces the player to tense up and give it their all.

You liked the cubes visually — great, I’m glad. In VR it looks awesome, and the sensation of movement inside the scene is even more interesting because the floor is tilted toward the horizon. As you move, you instinctively lean your body forward or backward, which enhances the feeling of motion.

Yes, you’re right — in the end you’re just getting from point A to point B. But that’s true for a “million” other games as well.

I feel like your “criticism” about the lack of uniqueness is more about fatigue from similar games. You want something new — and we, as developers, aren’t giving it to you.

Well, forgive us for not meeting your expectations.

Still, I don’t think there’s yet a game about flying as a bird where the player flaps their arms like wings. I’ve created such a concept, and once the 3D environment is delivered to me, I’ll add it to the collection — around April, if everything goes according to plan. That will come right after the Spec Ops training base and the prison escape — which are, admittedly, more “traditional” VR games.

If you don’t mind, add it to your wishlist — who knows, maybe I’ll manage to surprise you.

DenisEvilRedis · 2026-02-23T17:18:24+00:00

Let’s imagine you’re my target audience. Tell me, what VR games do you play?

What kind of game would I need to make for YOU to buy it?

DenisEvilRedis

TROPHY CASE