Oculus’s App Lab Overload

Facebook’s approach to the Quest’s VR app store is intended to make sure that users see a wide variety of vetted, quality VR releases. For many VR developers, though, the bottleneck between them and the store seems impassable. One result is that the App Lab, a sort of shadow app store Facebook launched in February, is piling up with games and apps.

The App Lab now hosts 500 releases, according to Road to VR, compared to just under 300 apps listed in the official Quest Store which has operated for two years. The App Lab was set up to allow developers to make some money from apps while they wait for approval to move to the official App Store. It’s certainly no substitute for the Quest Store: users logging into the Store don’t see App Lab releases in the menu of apps but if they can find through them a search if they know the exact title.