Roblox, the frighteningly massive and frequently controversial online sandbox used by players to create all manner of custom games, is heading deeper into the realm of virtual reality with the announcement of official support for Meta Quest. An open beta will launch for the Headset Formerly Known As Oculus in the next few weeks, promising the ability to play popular Roblox games in VR, as well as creating new ones designed around the experience.
Roblox’s devs announced that the game would launch an open beta via Meta Quest’s App Lab, supporting cross-platform play with the game’s current versions on PC, Xbox and mobile. Existing Roblox levels – of which there are an ungodly number, totalling over 15 million – will work in VR, with creators also able to make “unique new experiences with VR in mind” by selecting VR as a new device type when creating their game.
“Traditionally, developing a VR experience required a team that had VR-specific experience and skills,” Roblox wrote in a blog post. “With Roblox, developers will soon be able to publish their existing experiences to support VR with little to no additional coding effort required. This is because Roblox is designed to be universal, allowing the same experiences to run everywhere.”
While Roblox already supported a VR mode for the Oculus Rift, Quest2, HTC Vive and Valve Index, the new Meta Quest support will allow experiences to run completely untethered – i.e. without a connection to a PC – on the mobile headsets. The devs added that the untethered support would eventually expand to other VR headsets compatible with the game, with Meta Quest support limited to the Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro for the time being.
Although all Robolox creations marked as working on ‘Desktop’ will continue to be compatible with the existing PC VR mode for now, the devs said that they will eventually require experiences to be marked as explicitly VR-compatible to be played using any headset.
The open beta for Roblox will launch on Meta Quest in the coming weeks, with the team planning to gather feedback before they announce a full release. Users will need to be 13 or older to download the VR version – though presumably the game’s recently-announced mature 17-and-up experiences and many, many Squid Game recreations will be playable in VR like any other creation. Or just do virtual laundry with online strangers, your choice.
Matt Jarvis
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