Guy Godin

Guy Godin is a software developer best known as the creator of Virtual Desktop, an application that lets a virtual reality headset user see and control a computer's desktop and, on standalone headsets, stream PC VR games over Wi-Fi. Before working in VR he built game development tools at Ubisoft, Blizzard and Microsoft, according to his own account. He began Virtual Desktop in 2014 on the first Oculus development kit and switched to VR development full time in 2017.

Godin developed the app largely on his own. UploadVR described him in 2018 as its single developer and in July 2020 as its "sole developer", and reported in November 2023 that the app had been developed "principally by a single developer", written in native code rather than in an engine such as Unity or Unreal Engine. He is also known for a public dispute with Oculus in 2019, when the company had him remove wireless SteamVR streaming from the Oculus Quest store version of the app; Oculus allowed the feature in its store in February 2021.

Reviewed 15 October 2026. Checked every claim against the cited Voices of VR transcript, UploadVR articles (2018-2025), The Verge, The Hollywood Reporter, archived Road to VR, Hanselminutes notes, Steam store data and vrdesktop.net. About review dates.

Career

Game tools development

In a September 2020 interview on the Voices of VR podcast, Godin said he had spent about 15 years in the video game industry, developing tools for several game companies, and named Ubisoft, Blizzard and Microsoft as past employers. He described the work as building tools that artists and developers use to bring assets into games, such as level editors and texture tools. He said he moved into VR because he saw "a need for tools in the VR space", working on it at first in the evenings and on weekends, and that he switched to full-time VR development only in 2017.

Virtual Desktop

Godin told Voices of VR that he started developing for VR in 2014 with the first Oculus development kit, the Oculus Rift DK1. UploadVR, which interviewed him in February 2020, also reported that he began building the software in 2014. In October 2014 he appeared on Road to VR's Rev VR Podcast, where he discussed the differences between Windows 7 and Windows 8 for VR, the prospect of running the app on mobile headsets, and his thoughts on that year's Oculus Connect conference, including his experience with the Crescent Bay prototype. At the 2015 Proto Awards, whose winners The Hollywood Reporter listed on 22 September 2015, "the Virtual Desktop VR app from Guy Godin" won the award for best GUI.

The PC version was released in 2016 on Steam and the Oculus Store; Steam lists its release date as 31 March 2016. A separate mobile version for the Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR followed in November 2018. UploadVR reported that this version was written natively in C# with OpenGL and the Oculus SDK. According to UploadVR, Godin claimed this gave better performance and longer battery life than using a game engine such as Unity or Unreal Engine, which the publication said carry unnecessary overhead. Godin discussed the app on Scott Hanselman's Hanselminutes podcast in October 2020; the episode description highlights that it is written entirely in C#.

Virtual Desktop was one of about 50 apps available at the launch of the Oculus Quest in May 2019. Users found that the Quest version could also stream SteamVR games from a PC to the standalone headset, a feature Godin said he had worked on for months. On 11 June 2019 he announced on Reddit and Twitter that Oculus did not want the feature in its store. In a statement quoted by UploadVR, he wrote that "according to Oculus, I am hurting Quest", and said that after being told the feature did not meet the store's quality bar he had proposed making it an opt-in experimental option, which Oculus refused. A Facebook spokesperson told UploadVR that it did not comment on specific apps and that its store submission system was designed to ensure "a consistent, comfortable experience". Godin removed the feature and released it as a patch through SideQuest that unlocked it for people who had bought the app. In February 2020 he rebuilt the streaming feature, adding the "ability to stream native Oculus Rift games without needing Revive or SteamVR".

In July 2020 Godin told UploadVR that Virtual Desktop had made US$3 million in gross revenue, before Facebook's cut, on the Oculus Quest alone. He estimated that "about 90%" of users had applied the SideQuest patch, said he did not use analytics software, and said he had occasionally hired contractors, mainly for art. By February 2021 he had expanded the team to about four people, with himself the only one working on the software full time. That month Oculus approved wireless PC VR streaming for the official Quest store version. Godin told UploadVR: "It only makes sense to allow it in the official store when more than 90% of users had to go through complicated steps to unlock the feature."

In November 2023 Virtual Desktop added VDXR, an OpenXR runtime that can be used instead of SteamVR. UploadVR noted that VDXR was not developed by Godin but by Matthieu Bucchianeri, a Microsoft software engineer who built it in his spare time; Godin added it to the app's beta and then its stable release, and claimed "roughly 10% improved performance over using SteamVR". After Valve released its free Steam Link app for Quest later that month, Godin told UploadVR he was "Happy to have shown Meta and Valve how it can be done" and argued that Virtual Desktop still offered more options and features. In May 2025 UploadVR reported that "Guy Godin's app Virtual Desktop" was coming to the Play For Dream MR headset. The app's Steam listing names Virtual Desktop, Inc. as its developer and publisher, and the official website carries a Virtual Desktop, Inc. copyright notice.

Relationship with Oculus and Facebook

Godin has described a long and uneasy relationship with Oculus. He told Voices of VR that he interviewed at Oculus in 2014 while starting work on the idea, but the company "weren't really interested". He said that after the PC version launched in 2016 and became one of the most popular apps on the platform, Oculus was interested in buying the app's intellectual property, which he declined because "they didn't really offer anything that was worth it".

He also said Oculus later built the basic functions of his app into its own Oculus Rift software and labeled the feature "Virtual Desktop", and that his Rift sales fell afterward. In a September 2020 article on independent developers' concerns about Facebook's power in VR, The Verge dated this change to 2017 and reported Godin's account that it caused confusion, with users leaving one-star reviews because they thought he had copied Oculus. The same article reported that Godin and Bigscreen chief executive Darshan Shankar both said they had received early hiring offers from Oculus, and quoted Godin: "If you're successful, you're likely going to get copied by Oculus. They're going to integrate into their platform." At Facebook Connect that month, John Carmack said Oculus was interested in wireless streaming and noted that "someone is using a wireless VR streaming system and getting value from it"; The Verge wrote that on Oculus headsets that person was "probably using Godin's app".

See also

• Virtual Desktop
• Oculus Quest
• SideQuest
• Steam Link