WEARVR

WEARVR
Information
Platforms	All
Devices	All
Operating Systems	Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android
Accessible	Desktop, Mobile
Developer	Dubit, KZero
Notable Personnel	Nic Mitham (co-founder and CEO), Matthew Warneford (co-founder and CTO), Andrew Douthwaite (chief operating officer)
Apps	Over 3,500 (company figure, 2019)
Downloads	Over 1.7 million (company figure, October 2016)
Website	https://wearvr.com/

WEARVR (styled WeArVR in some early coverage) was an independent App Store for Virtual Reality devices and platforms, run by WEARVR LLC from offices in Atlanta, Georgia, and Leeds, England. It was created by Dubit, a digital development studio, and KZero, a gaming consultancy focused on VR market research, which started it as an incubator project in early 2014. As of January 19, 2015, the store had over 150,000 downloads.

The store opened in July 2014 and listed apps for development kits and mobile viewers such as the Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, Durovis Dive and Google Cardboard. Its pitch was device independence: instead of serving one platform, it hosted and linked to content for many headsets in one catalog. From 2016 it sold paid apps with a 75/25 revenue split in developers' favor, and from 2017 it also distributed its developers' content through partner hardware platforms, including Chinese companies and a Japanese headset distributor. The store is no longer online: by August 2023 the wearvr.com address redirected to Dubit's website.

Reviewed 27 September 2026. Checked every cited source (press coverage, WEARVR About/news/Weave pages and homepage captures on the Internet Archive, PR Newswire, Raconteur) against the history, figures, quotes, competition results and later-status claims. About review dates.

History

Founding and launch (2014-2015)

WEARVR began in early 2014 as an incubator project of Dubit, a digital development studio in Leeds, and the gaming consultancy KZero. KZero described itself as a consulting firm for companies operating in the "virtual space" and published forecasts for the consumer VR market. The founding team listed on the store's website was Nic Mitham (co-founder and CEO), Matthew Warneford (co-founder and CTO) and Ian Douthwaite (co-founder and board member), with Andrew Douthwaite as chief operating officer.

The store launched in July 2014. In January 2015 it announced that it had passed 150,000 downloads. According to the store's figures, Sunday was its busiest day of the week, and the milestone came on a Sunday when the game Couch Knights recorded almost 3,000 installs. Mitham said that most new users heard about the store by word of mouth on forums and sites such as Reddit, and that the store had referred more than 20,000 visitors to other VR sites through its outbound links. He estimated that the store would pass one million downloads by the middle of 2015. GamesBeat reported at the time that the store carried 643 games, the most downloaded being In Paris with 4,196 downloads, and noted that Oculus VR ran its own marketplace, Oculus VR Share, then in beta, so WEARVR's figures did not represent the whole market.

Funding and growth (2015-2016)

The company's own description says it was seed funded in February 2015. In April 2015, WEARVR announced that it had raised 1.5 million dollars in funding from a group of Atlanta-based investors, reported by TheBusinessDesk.com as £1m. At that point the store listed 900 apps with more than 200,000 downloads in total. Mitham said the money would expand the store's functionality. GamesBeat reported plans for a recommendation engine, user-curated game lists and a mobile app for discovering VR software, and said the company was investing in 360-degree video. He said the store would stay independent of any one platform: "virtual reality is about more than Oculus Rift: we want fans to know that they can download and access games from WEARVR for whatever device they're using."

From May 2015, Road to VR published a weekly "WEARVR Weekly Top Ten VR Downloads" video series, which described the store as "a cross-platform repository of virtual reality experiences". The first installment said WEARVR would soon let developers manage their own listings and upload files directly.

In February 2016 the store opened a self-submission portal and paid storefront (see Store features). Road to VR reported that the store had then passed 500,000 downloads and disclosed that WEARVR was running advertising on its site at the time.

An October 2016 feature in Raconteur's virtual and augmented reality report, which carried quotes from COO Andrew Douthwaite and ended with a link to the store, gave the company's figures as more than 1,500 apps, more than 1.7 million downloads and more than 200,000 installs of its own mobile app. It said the company was closing a second funding round, preparing to launch in the Chinese market and working with headset manufacturers to bring WEARVR content to their devices. Douthwaite said the company had launched a version for children called Bogglebox, "promoting child-safe, parent-friendly VR experiences". The store's About page in December 2016 still said Bogglebox would launch shortly, describing it as curated VR content "chosen specifically for children, with parents in mind". The company later said it had been funded in 2015 and 2017.

Hardware partnerships (2017-2019)

In an announcement reported on September 1, 2017, WEARVR named content partnerships with three hardware companies, opening new distribution channels to its more than 6,000 registered developers. Content was to appear in the app stores built into the Nibiru VR operating system, which Nibiru licensed to device makers; on the Pico Goblin headset from Pico Interactive, sold in the United States and Europe; and, through VR Japan, on the Idealens K2 headset in Japan. In December 2017 Pico Interactive announced that four Climax Studios games (Bandit Six, Salvo, Gun Sight and Hunters Gate) would come to the Pico Goblin, with WEARVR managing the porting work and facilitating the publishing partnership. That release described the store as hosting over 2,000 VR games and experiences.

On April 30, 2019, WEARVR announced a publishing agreement with the Chinese headset maker DPVR, which was added to the store's list of compatible devices. The announcement said WEARVR had earlier partnered with Nibiru, Pico and Pimax, ran an in-house porting service for developers who needed help moving content to these platforms, and had more than 7,000 registered developers. A June 12, 2019 announcement covered a partnership with Pimax: Pimax was to be added to the list of compatible devices, developers were to be able to sell Pimax games through the store in the near future, and the Pimax SDK was to be offered in the WEARVR Developer Centre. Andrew Douthwaite said of the Pimax 8K that "we were blown away by the high resolution". In 2019 the company described itself as hosting, selling and distributing over 3,500 VR games and experiences, including sales into China through a network of partners.

Remastered competition (2018)

In January 2018 WEARVR launched the $10,000 "Remastered Competition" for developers of early Oculus Rift DK1 and Oculus Rift DK2 demos. Entries had to have been released for the development kits, had to work at least on the consumer Oculus Rift CV1, and needed a clear enhancement over the original; the deadline was May 1, 2018. UploadVR wrote that many development-kit apps were not compatible with the CV1, and that after Oculus shut down its Oculus Share website it was unclear what would happen to many of them. The initial rules said WEARVR would pick the four best remasters and split the $10,000 between them. COO Andrew Douthwaite said these early demos "are what compelled us to launch WEARVR".

The winners were announced in May 2018. Three entries tied for the grand prize and received $3,000 each, and the remaining $1,000 was split equally among six runners-up.

Result	Entry	Developer
Grand prize (tie)	Titans of Space	DrashVR
Grand prize (tie)	Welcome to Oculus Remastered	Trey Davis
Grand prize (tie)	Breath Tech Demo	Brett Jackson, Head Start Design
Runners-up	Dreadeye, SenseEarth, Don't Look Back, FUKUSHIMA_RMI, Radial-G: Racing Revolved (Remastered), VR Experiences	Not named in the announcement

Weave cryptocurrency (2019)

In 2019 WEARVR promoted Weave (ticker WVR), which it called "the universal cryptocurrency for Virtual & Augmented Reality". The Weave website described a token built on Stellar, with a total supply of 960 million tokens, 480 million offered for sale at US$0.10 each, a soft cap of $1 million and a hard cap of $30 million; it listed a private sale starting February 1, 2019 and a public sale starting August 1, 2019. The stated plans were to use the token as a reward and payment method in the existing store (with an airdrop to users and discounts for purchases made in Weave), to open a separate blockchain-based decentralized store with no commission fees, to fund new VR projects through community crowdfunding, and to run a "Mixed Reality Goods" market for trading digital assets. WEARVR's DPVR and Pimax announcements said the company was about to enter the public sale stage of the Weave initial coin offering. The DPVR announcement added that the public sale would be preceded by a series of initial exchange offerings with a select number of Asian digital asset exchanges.

Later status

An Internet Archive capture of the homepage from February 2022 still shows the store running, with device filters that by then included the Oculus Quest, Oculus Go and Pimax headsets and the message "Join over 6,000 developers selling and promoting their VR apps across multiple devices". By August 2023 wearvr.com redirected to dubit.io, the website of co-creator Dubit, and captures from August 2024 onward show no store content; a July 2026 capture shows a domain parking page.

Store features

WEARVR hosted downloadable apps and also listed apps sold elsewhere, linking out to the other store. Mitham said in 2015 that these outbound links helped developers, many of whom were hobbyists and small teams in need of exposure. The February 2016 update added:

• a self-submission portal for developers, with listings that could be edited at any time;
• a paid storefront with a 75/25 revenue split in the developer's favor, compared with the 70/30 split usual on Apple's and Google's mobile app stores;
• different prices for different platform versions of the same app;
• free listings that linked through to apps sold on other stores such as iOS and Android;
• developer analytics, and download and order history for user accounts.

In the COO's 2016 description, visitors picked their headset from a menu and could download content from WEARVR directly or through an external app store. The catalog covered games and non-game content; the store's own description listed "roller coasters, driving and flying sims through to 360-degree videos, social apps and jump scares". Raconteur's feature mentioned 360-degree cockpit videos from Mentour 360 and real estate walkthroughs from ViewPort as examples.

The device filter on the store's homepage grew as new hardware appeared. The October 2018 homepage offered the Rift CV1, Rift DK2, Rift DK1, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, OSVR HDK2, Samsung Gear VR, Daydream View, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Nibiru, Idealens K2, Pico Goblin, WebVR and 360-degree videos. The February 2022 capture adds Oculus Go, Oculus Quest and Pimax.

Reported figures

Most of these figures come from the company, as quoted or reported at the time.

Date	Apps	Downloads	Registered developers	Source
January 2015	643 games	Over 150,000
April 2015	900	Over 200,000
February 2016		Over 500,000
October 2016	Over 1,500	Over 1.7 million (plus over 200,000 installs of the mobile app)
December 2016	Over 1,000
September 2017			Over 6,000
December 2017	Over 2,000
2019	Over 3,500		Over 7,000

See also

• App Store
• Oculus Store
• SideQuest
• Itch.io