The Big Update: Online Multiplayer, New on Quest, a Year of Improvements
The Big VR Giants Update: Online Multiplayer, a New Platform, and a Year of Improvements
Folks, we owe you an update. It might have looked like VR Giants went quiet, or even that we'd abandoned it, but we never stopped. We kept it up to date all year, we just didn't post much about it. Sorry about that. From here on we'll keep you in the loop far more often.
Back when we last posted, online co-op was "coming." It landed, and a whole lot more with it. Here's what changed.
Watch on YouTube
Our launch trailer. A bit dated now, but there it is.
Real online multiplayer: play with your friends, wherever they are
We launched on a new platform (Meta Quest standalone), and with it came real online multiplayer with simple join codes. No more juggling Parsec or Steam Remote Play Together just to play together. It's cross-play across Steam (PC VR) and Meta Quest 3, Quest 3S and Quest 2, and voice chat is built in. Share a code and go.
FREE Friend's Pass
Only one of you needs to own the game. The other can play for free. Since the host always plays the giant, the person with the VR headset is the one who should grab the main game, and their friend jumps in free as David.
Smoother and more stable
- Unity 6 engine. Moved to the latest engine for a more stable foundation.
- Sweeping performance pass across every level: detail tuning plus cleared-out background overhead that was quietly eating frames.
And there's more coming. We're not done with performance.
VR startup, fixed for good
A bit of honesty: as part of bringing VR Giants to Quest, we switched the renderer to Vulkan, and that quietly broke some OpenXR startup behavior. For some of you it showed up as performance hitches or crashes at launch. It took us longer than we'd like to track down, and we're sorry about that. It's now fixed. The game automatically uses your headset's runtime and starts cleanly, with no performance cost. If you're still running into trouble, you'll now get clear on-screen instructions.
Prefer to play without a headset? Desktop mode lets you jump straight in as David on a normal screen.
Still stuck? Join our Discord or reach out on the Steam forums and we'll help you sort it.
Multiplayer resilience and fixes
- More forgiving version matching. Jump in with friends even on slightly different updates, as long as the main version lines up.
- Co-op stability. Fixed crashes when entering certain levels and a stuck end-of-session loading screen, plus the earlier host-side crash fix.
Coming to phones: Android and iOS
As we announced at our Quest launch, VR Giants is coming to Android and iOS smartphones soon, so even more of your friends can hop in as David and join your game.
Faster updates from here
Behind the scenes we built a serious automated testing and CI system this year. You won't see it directly, but it means future updates ship faster, and more improvements are already on the way.
We hope we've been able to put to rest any rumors that we'd abandoned the game. Thanks for sticking with us, and stay tuned for our upcoming updates!
Cheers,
Wolfgang & the Team