Meta Quest Store

Meta Quest Store
Information
Platforms	Meta Horizon OS
Devices	Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest 3S, Meta Quest Pro
Operating Systems	Meta Horizon OS
Accessible	VR, Mobile, Web
Developer	Meta Platforms
Website	https://www.meta.com/experiences/

See also: Meta Horizon OS

The Meta Quest Store, officially renamed the Meta Horizon Store in 2024, is the curated digital application store run by Meta Platforms for its Meta Quest line of standalone Virtual Reality headsets. It is the main channel through which VR games and apps reach Quest owners, handling discovery, purchase, download, payment and updates inside the headset, through the companion mobile app, and on the web. The storefront has been renamed several times over its history: it was known as Oculus Share from 2013 to 2015, Oculus Store from 2015 to 2022, the Meta Quest Store from 2022 to 2024, and the Meta Horizon Store from 2024 onward.

Unlike the Oculus Store of the PC era, which served tethered headsets such as the Oculus Rift, the modern store is built around standalone Quest hardware running Meta Horizon OS. Historically it was tightly curated, which set it apart from open desktop marketplaces such as Steam, and it has long coexisted with unofficial distribution routes such as side-loading and the third-party SideQuest catalog. The store name change to "Meta Horizon Store" accompanied Meta's decision to open its operating system to third-party headset makers.

History

Oculus Share and Oculus Store

The storefront traces back to Oculus Share, a beta website first announced on August 19, 2013 for distributing early VR demos and software during the developer-kit era. Following Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR, it was reworked as the Oculus Store, which sold software for the Oculus Rift and later the mobile Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Go headsets.

Quest Store launch and curation

The store as it exists today took shape with the launch of the original Oculus Quest standalone headset in May 2019. Meta (then Oculus) applied a deliberately heavy curation model to the Quest catalog: developers had to submit a concept document for review before they could even access the full store submission process, and Oculus aimed to respond on a concept within about ten business days so that studios got an early signal before making a large production investment. Even after concept approval, the finished app still went through a final technical and content review before it could launch. Meta framed the concept-review step as a way to give developers an early signal on whether an idea fit the platform before they committed to full production.

Rebrand to Quest Store

In late 2021, following Facebook's rebranding as Meta Platforms (announced October 28, 2021), the company began retiring the Oculus brand, with chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth announcing that the Oculus Store would be renamed the "Quest Store." The wider rebrand rolled out across 2022: a system software update replaced the Oculus logo with Meta's, and the companion mobile app was renamed from "Oculus" to "Meta Quest" in 2022.

Rename to Meta Horizon Store (2024)

On April 22, 2024, Meta announced a major restructuring of the storefront. The Quest operating system was renamed Meta Horizon OS and the Quest Store was renamed the Meta Horizon Store. The same announcement opened Horizon OS to third-party headset manufacturers, with Meta naming Asus (through its Republic of Gamers brand), Lenovo and Microsoft's Xbox as initial hardware partners, so that future non-Meta headsets could ship with access to the same store and app ecosystem. The companion mobile app was likewise rebranded from "Meta Quest" to "Meta Horizon" during 2024.

In December 2025, Meta said it had paused the third-party headset licensing program "to focus on building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market," a move that effectively shelved the planned Asus and Lenovo Horizon OS headsets, though the company said it would revisit partnerships as the category evolves.

App Lab

For its first two years the Quest Store had only one publishing path, full curation, which left experimental, niche or in-progress titles with no official home and pushed many of them onto side-loading tools. Meta addressed this on February 2, 2021 by introducing App Lab, a separate distribution channel that let developers publish Quest apps without going through the store's quality-curation process. App Lab apps installed and ran exactly like normal store apps and appeared in the user's library, but they were not surfaced when browsing the main store; users reached them through a direct product URL, by searching for the exact app name, or via platforms such as SideQuest.

App Lab was not the same as unrestricted side-loading. Submissions still had to comply with Meta's content guidelines, data-use policies and a reduced set of Virtual Reality Checks (VRCs), so the apps were technically vetted even though they skipped the editorial "is this good enough" review. The channel became the launchpad for several breakout titles, most notably Gorilla Tag, which started on App Lab before graduating to the main store.

Merge into the main store

The same April 22, 2024 announcement that renamed the store also began winding App Lab down. Meta laid out a two-phase plan: first an "App Lab" tab would appear inside the store so the apps were easier to browse, and later all App Lab content would be merged into the main store, with the store no longer rejecting submissions on a subjective taste or quality basis and instead requiring only basic technical, content and privacy compliance. The merge rolled out starting around August 5, 2024 and was confirmed complete on August 23, 2024, when Meta notified App Lab developers that their titles had moved into the main Meta Horizon Store, where they became publicly searchable and eligible to appear in store categories and algorithmic recommendations. To let studios still signal that a title was not finished, Meta added an "Early Access" tag, broadly similar to the equivalent label on Steam.

Curation model

The store's defining characteristic for most of its life was strict curation, in contrast to open PC marketplaces. Under the original Quest Store model every app passed both a concept review and a final pre-launch review, and many submissions were rejected on quality grounds, which kept the catalog comparatively small but consistent. The 2024 transition deliberately loosened this. After App Lab was folded in, Meta stopped rejecting apps for subjective taste or quality and instead screens submissions only against baseline technical, content and privacy requirements, so the curated and formerly-App-Lab titles now sit side by side in a single, more open catalog.

Revenue model

The store uses the same headline revenue split as most major app and game platforms. Under Meta's developer distribution agreement, Meta retains 30 percent of the net revenues from app and in-app sales and remits the remaining 70 percent to the developer. For recurring subscriptions the split improves for developers over time: Meta keeps 30 percent during the first three months of a given subscription, then drops its share to 15 percent (paying the developer 85 percent) from the fourth consecutive month onward.

Meta has periodically reported the cumulative money spent on the store as a sign of its commercial scale. The company said in September 2023 that customers had spent more than 2 billion US dollars on Quest Store content, a figure it was still citing into 2025, and it reported that total developer payments grew by roughly 12 percent in 2024.

Relationship to side-loading and SideQuest

Because the store was curated for years, a parallel ecosystem of unofficial distribution grew up around Quest. Side-loading is the process of installing an Android application package (APK) onto a Quest headset directly, bypassing the store entirely; it is more flexible than any official channel but more technical to set up. SideQuest is a third-party platform that grew into the best-known hub for non-store Quest content; it aggregates App Lab listings and side-loadable apps into one browsable library, making experimental software easier to find than Meta's own channels did before 2024. App Lab itself was promoted as a middle ground between the locked-down store and raw side-loading: it required no APK juggling and Meta described it as a way to reach users "via direct links or platforms like SideQuest, without requiring store approval and without sideloading." With the August 2024 merge, much of what previously lived only on App Lab or via side-loading is now directly searchable inside the Meta Horizon Store.