Is Godot becoming the best engine for creating VR games?

Here's my thesis: if you want to create VR games, you should seriously consider using the Godot engine.

Since Juan 'Reduz' Linietsky and Ariel 'Punto' Manzur published Godot's source code on GitHub in February 2014, we can talk about a revolution similar to the one started by Blender: Godot is an engine "by creators for creators," free and designed for creating games (not only) in the indie segment. Although Unreal Engine and Unity are still considered the default game engines, Godot is increasingly being talked about as a third way – an alternative, especially for young, ambitious creators looking for new paths.

IS THE VR GAME MARKET WORTH THE EFFORT OF CREATORS?

If we are talking about new paths, the VR gaming market is one such path. Although we have already become accustomed to virtual entertainment, this segment is still looking for new avenues of development, both in the realm of full VR and AR games. This trend has been noticed by large corporations – who remembers Apple's viral Vision Pro – raise your hand. Meta is leading the way, with Mark Zuckerberg announcing Ray Ban Display, the second generation of glasses, just a few days ago. Sure, you could say that Ray-Bans aren't meant for gaming – which is obviously true, but it shows a trend that Meta has picked up on and is trying to monetize: moving the digital world into augmented reality and virtual reality. That's why the most popular VR goggles on the market are Quest 2 and 3. In other words, Meta seems to be betting on a future world where smartphones will disappear, replaced by AR glasses, and as a result, a large segment of electronic gaming will move into this space. It's a safe bet that VR entertainment will follow suit.
It is worth noting that more and more educational institutions are equipping themselves with VR headsets. ClassVR, a supplier of headsets for education, declares that the number of schools worldwide that have access to this technology currently exceeds 20,000 and is steadily increasing. One might ask whether this is creating a new market and demand for educational VR applications.

Speculation? Of course. The future is never certain, and although the VR market is fascinating, its share of the pie, considering the entire electronic entertainment industry, is... negligible, amounting to about 0.7–1%.
To be precise, in 2023, Newzoo wrote the following about the VR segment in its industry report:

VR gaming will continue to grow but will remain relatively niche. Partly true. The VR install base is growing steadily and will reach 30.8 million by the end of 2023 (+15.6% year-on- year). VR got more popular during lockdowns, but it's proving tricky to keep newly acquired users active and spending on new content. Despite the growing install base, we now forecast that spending on VR games will decline in 2023 to $1.3 billion.
https://newzoo.com/resources/blog/video-games-in-2023-the-year-in-numbers

In July 2025, the same service reported:

VR's global active install base reached 28.6 million, but game spending declined 3.6% to just above $1 billion.
https://newzoo.com/resources/blog/global-games-market-update-q2-2025?utm

The VR gaming market does not seem to be growing exponentially – it is quite small for the gaming industry, but at the same time stable. Can you expect great international success and fame by releasing your game in VR? Well, probably not. It is predicted that VR headsets will become cheaper within 4 years, and the number of releases will increase. If this is true, the VR market is on the verge of a boom.
It is worth noting that "on the verge of a boom" here means a market worth about $1 billion, which is not crowded; according to Steamdb, 18,624 games were released on Steam alone in 2024. In the same year, 536 VR games were released on Steam. How many appeared in the Meta Quest store? It's hard to say – in 2024, Horizon Store and App Lab merged, so thousands of existing titles became available in the Quest goggle store. VRDB reports that over 4,000 new listings appear annually (games and applications combined) appear annually.
Conclusions? VR is a small market with predicted growth in the coming years, a prediction that seems to be accepted and developed by large corporations such as Meta and Apple. In other words, if you want your game to stand out in a place where you don't have to elbow your way in and the competition won't eat you alive, the VR market may be the place you're looking for.
All you need is a friendly environment in which to create your project.

GODOT: FROM CREATORS FOR CREATORS

It is 2007, and two programmers from Argentina, Juan 'Reduz' Linietsky and Ariel 'Punto' Manzur, are laying the foundations for a new game engine. They develop it slowly, taking their time, and in 2014 they release their code on GitHub. It turns out that this is exactly what game developers needed. Its potential is quickly noticed, and in 2016 Godot receives grants from Mozilla, among others, in 2017 from Microsoft (C# entry), in 2020 from Epic MegaGrants, and in subsequent years also dedicated XR support. Godot appeared on the market and won the favor and trust of developers. But is it the right place to create VR games?
Here are three reasons to say "yes":

1. Godot: available on everything & "Plug and play."

Would you be surprised if I told you that a game engine can be anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred megabytes in size? The latest version I downloaded for Windows was about 55 MB before unpacking and about 120 MB after (it depends on the version/platform).
You can also download the engine for other systems, such as Linux, Android, macOS, and even Quest VR goggles, because Godot is available directly from the Quest store. So you don't even need a computer (just a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse) – although at this point it's more of a curiosity than a real feature.
The integration with VR is very noticeable right from the start: Godot has an optimized environment for creating VR games: grabbing objects, teleportation, and other ways of moving around, hands work right from the start – so you don't waste time on the basics.

2. MIT license

As I mentioned above, Godot is a program created by developers for developers, released on GitHub in 2014. It is open source – created by an increasingly active community. This means that if you have created a game that turned out to be a hit, Godot does not want anything from you – there are no royalties or obligation to include the information "created in Godot" in the game description (in practice, the license text is included in the distribution). For comparison, Unreal Engine's policy is that if your game earns over $1 million, UE deducts 5% from every dollar above that amount (with special exceptions; from 2025, the discount will be 3.5% if the release also includes EGS). Unity, on the other hand, is free until your company exceeds $200,000 in revenue, after which you pay a subscription fee of approximately $2,200 per year for each person in your company who uses Unity. And while all three approaches are OK, it's impossible not to notice that Godot is the most beginner-friendly environment for game developers.

3. Stability

While searching the web while writing this article, I came across reports from developers creating VR games in Unreal Engine – some pointed out that in order to create, you need to have a headset connected to your computer before starting the project, otherwise the option to create in VR may not be available. There were also descriptions that if the VR goggles went into sleep mode during work, UE could shut down – which completely ruins the flow (and we all know how important this state is when you are working on a project). When someone asks on the Internet which engine is best for creating VR games, Unity is often mentioned as an engine with excellent documentation related to the creation of such projects. This cannot be denied; the problem that is sometimes raised is the lack of stability, not at the software level, but in the company's policy. For example, YouTuber VirtualRook, in his video "Godot VR has become Amazing", mentions a situation from 2023 when the engine's creators announced the introduction of a "Runtime Fee" for each installed game for developers who exceeded the thresholds mentioned earlier. Unity ultimately backed away from this idea in 2024, but VirtualRook mentions in his video that the whole situation severely damaged his faith in Unity. Against this backdrop, Godot, developed as open source, with its excellent implementation of VR tools, stands out strongly.

Ultimately, it can be said that game developers should try to familiarize themselves with each engine and, above all, be aware of what kind of project they are creating and what software will best meet their expectations. Each of the above-mentioned engines has been used many times to create the hits we know and love, and each has advantages that, when properly recognized, can give your project a boost.

DO GODOT AND VR HAVE A FUTURE TOGETHER?

Are big corporations seeing more by investing in VR? Will the VR market soon enter a boom phase? Although these questions sound like an attempt at precognition, the vision of such a future seems to me to be getting closer and closer. Apple and Meta are investing in this technology, and more and more educational institutions are purchasing headsets. More and more gamers are becoming convinced of this form of entertainment. VR has established itself on the global market and is here to stay – and there is still enough room for game developers to make their mark and build a community.
In this increasingly friendly environment, Godot emerges, offering a set of real advantages for VR developers: accessibility, stability, open source licenses, ease of prototyping, and a dedicated community.
When all the pieces fall into place, the right question to ask would be: is this the right time to act?