Viverse

Viverse
Information
Type	Metaverse
Subtype	Web platform
Creator	HTC
Developer	HTC
Operating System	Cross-platform (runs in a web browser)
Browser	Web browsers, including WebXR-capable browsers on VR headsets
Devices	Smartphones, tablets, PCs and Macs, VR headsets with WebXR support
Release Date	Announced March 2, 2022; VIVERSE Worlds launched February 26, 2025
Price	Free to access
Website	https://www.viverse.com

Viverse (stylized VIVERSE) is a metaverse and web content platform developed by HTC. HTC announced it at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on March 2, 2022, describing it as "the next chapter" of its VIVE Reality vision. At first HTC presented Viverse as an umbrella for its own services, partner apps, avatars and a cryptocurrency wallet. Since the launch of VIVERSE Worlds on February 26, 2025, it has been a browser-based service for hosting, sharing and embedding interactive 3D content, which visitors can open on flat screens or, through WebXR, in a VR headset without installing an app.

HTC promotes the platform as the "YouTube of 3D content". In December 2025 the company said Viverse had reached 1 million monthly active users and more than 23,000 published worlds. Viverse is separate from HTC's Viveport app store and from Vive Wave, the company's SDK and runtime for Android-based headsets.

Reviewed 6 October 2026. Checked every cited source (HTC press releases and blogs, VIVERSE docs and blog, Road to VR, UploadVR, MIXED, Auganix, AppleInsider, GSMArena, Voices of VR, Inverse, The Ghost Howls) against each date, figure, quote, name and citation title. About review dates.

History

Announcement (2022)

HTC unveiled Viverse at Mobile World Congress 2022 alongside VIVE Browser, a VR web browser; VIVE Connect, a portal for moving between Viverse experiences; and VIVE Guardian, a tool that lets parents, guardians and teachers oversee young people's VR use. HTC chairwoman Cher Wang said in the announcement: "VIVE is our brand and means 'life', and Verse refers to the chapters of life. Viverse provides seamless experiences, reachable on any device, anywhere, and is enabled by the virtual and augmented reality, high-speed connectivity, AI, and blockchain technologies that HTC has invested in for several years."

At the show HTC ran a live demo in which visitors entered Viverse from tablets, PCs, smartphones and the Vive Flow VR glasses. Auganix listed the experiences in that demo as VIVE Sync (HTC's VR meeting app), Engage, VRChat, the Museum of Other Realities, the music platform Beatday, and VIVE Create, a browser-based, code-free VR content creation tool. VIVE Browser was described as supporting Web3 login, WebXR and WebAssembly. In a later blog post HTC said Viverse would use open standards including OpenXR and the VRM avatar format.

Avatars, phone and wallet (2022)

On July 25, 2022, HTC announced a partnership with pixiv to bring avatars made in pixiv's VRoid Studio, an anime-style 3D character creator, into Viverse. pixiv co-founded the VRM Consortium, which set up the VRM avatar file format, and HTC said it had supported VRM since Viverse launched; the VRM Consortium and HTC were both principal members of the Metaverse Standards Forum. Joseph Lin, then president of Viverse, said in the release that avatars "represent a user's persona and swiftly convey the idea of 'who I am' to others."

HTC's Desire 22 Pro smartphone, announced on June 28, 2022, was marketed as compatible with Viverse and with the Vive Flow. GSMArena reported that HTC was bringing a Viverse Wallet for managing cryptocurrencies and NFTs from the phone, and that buyers who ordered before July 31 would receive an NFT redeemable through the Viverse app. The phone went on sale in Taiwan on July 1, 2022 for TWD 11,990; in Europe it cost EUR 459 / GBP 399, with pre-orders delivered from August 1.

Headsets, business and SDK (2023)

HTC announced the Vive XR Elite headset on January 5, 2023, with pre-orders opening that day and shipments expected from late February, and called it "the ideal physical gateway to the universe of experiences offered by VIVERSE, our version of the metaverse". The release said Viverse was "accessible from a wide range of connected devices that support a web browser", and that the platform would use Lamina1's layer one tools for cross-world, cross-platform asset distribution.

At Mobile World Congress on February 27, 2023, HTC launched VIVERSE for Business, a platform-as-a-service product for organizations that want their own branded virtual spaces. Customers build the space from pre-made modules; at launch these were Common Spaces, Reception Space, Showroom Space, Team Space, Meeting Space and Auditorium Space. HTC said the spaces could be reached from a smartphone, tablet, desktop or laptop PC, or XR device. The same announcement introduced new VIVE Originals content from BEATDAY in Viverse, including "Light the Night: Redhat Killer", which HTC described as BEATDAY's first theatrical project made with volumetric capture.

In March 2023 HTC announced the VIVERSE SDK, a set of tools including Avatar, Scene, Market, Account and Social components for building experiences on mobile, PC, XR devices and web apps. HTC said the SDK would be available from the second quarter of 2023 for Unity projects and web app development. The Avatar API supported cartoon-style avatars, realistic avatars generated from photos uploaded to the VIVE Avatar smartphone app, and VRM avatars.

Polygon Streaming (2024)

On July 16, 2024, HTC released Polygon Streaming as a VIVERSE service for putting interactive 3D models into websites and apps. Instead of downloading a whole model, it streams only the polygon data for the parts of the model the viewer is looking at, combining server-side processing with client-side rendering. HTC claimed up to an 8x decrease in load time, up to a 2x increase in average frame rate, and up to an 81% decrease in total project size. It listed Unity, Unreal Engine and WebXR integration, and prices starting from US$99 for the early release. Joseph Lin, general manager of VIVERSE, was quoted in the announcement.

VIVERSE Worlds (2025)

HTC launched VIVERSE Worlds on February 26, 2025, shortly before Mobile World Congress 2025. Road to VR described it as a 3D content platform that can be embedded on "any website for any device"; creators can copy a world into another website as an iframe at no cost, and visitors can subscribe to creators. UploadVR noted that, unlike Horizon Worlds, VRChat and Rec Room, it does not need a dedicated app on a headset because it runs through WebXR in the browser. Content at launch included 3D manuals, interactive websites, animated displays, Gaussian splats and immersive e-commerce. An HTC spokesperson told AppleInsider that the platform did not yet support the Apple Vision Pro but that this was "a major priority".

In an interview with Voices of VR recorded before the launch, HTC's head of growth Andranik Aslanyan said HTC had signed on more than 100 creators in about three months through direct outreach. He explained Polygon Streaming as working "similar to video streaming": the platform streams meshes "at the density needed for the distance from you."

On June 12, 2025, HTC launched VIVERSE Studio, a creator dashboard for uploading builds as ZIP files and tracking views and playtime, and said Viverse was "the first platform to support all major WebXR engines". The listed engines were Unity WebGL, Three.js, Babylon.js, React-Three-Fiber, PlayCanvas, A-Frame, Godot and Wonderland Engine.

In December 2025 Viverse and the Icosa Foundation added one-click publishing from Open Brush, letting artists turn a VR painting into a multiplayer browser world for free. HTC said it was the first time the Open Brush web viewer had supported multiplayer in the browser. In the same month HTC announced the 1 million monthly active user figure and the winners of its VIVERSE student hackathon, which had entries from around 40 schools. HTC's year-end summary also listed more than 140 funded Creator Program projects, integrations with KIRI Engine and World Labs' Marble, and a beta of monetization features such as premium purchases and channel subscriptions.

Partner Program (2026)

In February 2026 Viverse, by then describing itself as a web content distribution platform, launched the VIVERSE Partner Program. It pays creators of games, videos, web apps and artwork by unique views and engagement time, not by ad impressions. A view counts after at least 30 seconds of interaction, payouts start at a US$50 threshold, the program is non-exclusive, and creators keep ownership of their work. Writing in March 2026, the blog The Ghost Howls noted that Viverse had recently opened to video hosting and apps, and that HTC was porting content from its location-based entertainment business to the platform.

Features

Access

Worlds, games and videos on Viverse open in a web browser. The site describes itself with the line "Play browser games, explore 3D worlds, and watch creator videos" for free, and lists games by genre, with a separate multiplayer category. On headsets with WebXR support, the same world can be entered in VR without installing an app. Road to VR noted in December 2025 that few of the most popular experiences were marked as VR-compatible, and that it was unclear what share of users visited with a headset.

Creator tools

The developer documentation lists these tools:

Tool	Description
VIVERSE Studio	Dashboard for uploading experiences, apps and videos and monitoring their performance
Command line interface	Publishes 3D experiences and applications from a terminal
Standalone app publishing	Publishes builds from web engines including Unity WebGL, Godot, three.js, Babylon.js and A-Frame
PlayCanvas toolkit	Toolkit for the PlayCanvas editor that publishes to Viverse with automatic support for multiplayer Viverse avatars
Templates (VIVERSE Create)	No-code world builder using templates, 3D elements and media; models can also be imported from Sketchfab
VIVERSE Unity SDK	Authentication, cloud save, multiplayer, leaderboards and avatars for Unity games

Polygon Streaming and Gaussian splats

Polygon Streaming streams 3D model data on demand, sending the polygons for the visible parts of a model at the density needed for the viewer's distance. HTC says it works on smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs, and XR headsets. Viverse Worlds also supports Gaussian splats.

Avatars

In 2025 HTC's head of growth said Viverse supports VRM avatars. The PlayCanvas toolkit and the Unity SDK both include avatar support. Earlier avatar support came through the VRoid partnership and the VIVERSE SDK's Avatar API.

Supported devices

From 2022 to 2023 HTC presented its own hardware as the main way into Viverse: the Vive Flow at the 2022 launch demo, the Desire 22 Pro phone, and the Vive XR Elite. HTC also said from the start that Viverse would be reachable from tablets, PCs and smartphones. Since 2025 the platform runs in a web browser on VR headsets, mobile devices, PCs and Macs, and it does not require HTC hardware.

Reception

The 2022 announcement drew skepticism. Writing for Inverse, Ian Carlos Campbell argued that HTC's pitch mixed buzzwords such as AI, 5G and NFTs, and that HTC, like Meta, seemed to want control of a closed platform rather than an open, linkable web. Coverage of the VIVERSE Worlds launch in 2025 focused on its browser-based model. UploadVR highlighted that Viverse Worlds could be used in VR on almost any headset without an app, while Road to VR said Polygon Streaming and easy embedding could give it an edge but pointed out that similar platforms such as FrameVR, Matterport and Spatial.io focus on niches because broad adoption is hard to monetize. It also cited the 2024 shutdown of Mozilla Hubs and noted that HTC had not yet revealed its monetization strategy. Reporting on the 1 million user figure in December 2025, Road to VR called it "a pretty big milestone" but noted that it was still "miles from the likes of Roblox".

See also

• HTC
• Viveport
• Vive Wave
• WebXR
• Metaverse
• Mozilla Hubs
• Spatial (platform)