My Lessons in Monetizing WebXR Games

The honest state of making money with WebXR

Here is the TLDR of everything I learned along the way: WebXR is the best way I know to distribute a VR game and one of the hardest ways to make money from one.

This is the long version. The models I actually tried, what they paid and the ones that mostly went nowhere. Real numbers where I can share them, honest blanks where I do not.

I have been shipping VR games that run in a browser since 2018. With Jonathan Hale and Ferry Abt, we built Construct Arcade. This was the first WebXR game platform, back when "VR in the browser" still got you blank stares at meetups. Over the years, my focus switched over more and more to different projects at Vhite Rabbit, much more games focused and trying to create interesting XR experiences. We shut down Construct Arcade and tried to focus on different things, which I won't get into too much here. Now, dmnshd.gg is my latest test in making WebXR financially viable.

Why WebXR monetization is its own problem

If you come from native VR, almost none of your playbook transfers, as discovery is a huge issue.

Then there is the perception tax. "It's just a website" sits in people's heads and a website is something you expect to be free for end users. A Quest Store game at twenty dollars and a browser game of the same quality do not reach the same wallet, even if the browser one is the better game.

The big upside cuts both ways. Zero install friction means an enormous top of funnel. Someone taps a link and they are inside the game in seconds, no download, no account. But that same frictionless tap brings shallow sessions and low intent. People who risked nothing to get in do not feel much commitment once they are there.

The models I've actually tried

In-app purchases and a token economy

Cosmetics, skins, creative-mode unlocks. This is what the dmnshd shop does today. Payments go through a provider like Stripe or Paddle. If you do not want to deal with VAT and refunds yourself, pick a merchant of record like Paddle or Lemon Squeezy and pay a couple of points more for the privilege.

The honest result from Construct Arcade over 5 years of operation: All IAPs were integrated into single-player games and the sales were ridiculously small. We made around 300 USD over those years from our IAPs, while having multiple millions of users play our games. My #1 take from that time is that people do not buy cosmetic IAPs in single player experiences on the Web(XR).

I think two structural reasons hold the sales back even more: first, entering card details inside a headset is miserable, so you end up sending people to their phone with a QR code or asking them to buy on the web (think about how awful it is to enter credit card details in a headset). They obviously also have to log into the game, which creates even more friction. Every extra step in that chain costs you buyers. Second, on a free browser game, willingness to pay is just lower to begin with, as players come in for free and expect it to be free.

The fee math does favor you here compared to native at least. Stripe takes about 2.9% plus 30 cents a transaction; a merchant of record runs roughly 5 to 7% all in. The Meta Store takes 30%. That gap is theoretically the strongest argument for doing payments yourself, but the catch is that web checkout usually converts significantly below a native store's one-tap purchase and a worse conversion rate can mean no sale at all.

Display and video ads

Ad placements from a network like Google AdSense.

Pre-rolls and rewarded videos are awkward in an immersive session. You cannot drop a 30-second video on someone mid-VR without making them queasy or making them rip the headset off (or kicking them out of the immersive session). They work much better on the flat, non-VR version of a game, which most WebXR games also have (but again, your audience is usually in XR).

Ads did make money. At their peak some of our games pulled more than 5,000 views per day and with a decent CPM that turned into something real. We did make a good amount of money with Construct Arcade over the years and ads seemed to have been a solid choice in monetizing the user base. The honest catch is that ad revenue needs volume and volume is generally difficult if you don't have the catalog of a whole games platform. Finding an ads partner might also come with its challenges, I recommend you stick to your ad partner once you have one you are satisfied with.

Immersive ads

We are partnering with Borellion for immersive ads and have made a profitable business with them through immersive ads over the years. They have SDKs that place ads live inside the 3D scene as objects or billboards instead of interrupting it, which fits VR far better than a pre-roll ever will.

Client work

Demand for WebXR development is not high. I will be blunt: it is risky as a primary income. We had the honor of working with one of the most capable entrepreneurs in the space, but the number of people willing to bet their business on WebXR is small. Sadly, in 2026, WebXR games are still mostly a passion field, not a stable job.

Launching on other platforms

WebXR does not lock you to the open web and it also does not lock you to a headset. The same project can ship in more places than you think and being flexible about that is half the game. I believe this is one of the key parts of succeeding with WebXR games going forward.

Meta now lets you publish WebXR content to the Horizon Store as PWAs (progressive web apps), which puts a browser game on the store with real store discovery behind it. The open web is not the only target either: Geobeat just launched on YouTube Playables. I am currently trying multiple avenues to get dmnshd's catalog onto as many monetizable surfaces as possible.

Another avenue is to go with a platform like Viverse that targets this exact WebXR focused audience.

Donations and Patreon

A possible venue. I am doubtful it carries a studio on its own and I have not tried it to be honest. Might be a worthy decision if your social media game is good, but I don't think it is something that will succeed if you don't have a significant audience.

Some numbers of dmnshd.gg and the games as of May 2026:

• Total plays on Archery Evolution: Time Trials throughout its lifetime (2022-2026): 2.5M
• Age of Site: 2 Months
• Token-shop conversion and average spend: 0 MRR, only 1 sale so far for $9.99

The one definite thing I can say without a single number: do not build a business for one channel. If a payment provider changes its terms, an ad network deindexes you or a single client walks, you want at least two other monetization channels to be alive.

What I'd do differently and what actually works

Diversify, diversify, diversify. Ads alone will not carry you and neither will a shop on a free browser games platform.

Host your own content or partner with publishers who already know how to monetize. Owning the relationship with the player across platforms is how other mediums' creators keep their audiences alive and why should WebXR creation be any different? Have your own Discord, connect it with your game and allow players to take part in as many different ways as you can.

In my experience, the worst case is also the best case: build the platform and own the audience, not just one game. That is my dmnshd.gg bet in one sentence.

Set expectations for your games, treat WebXR as distribution and as the top of the funnel, then monetize deeper somewhere additionally with more intent and publish where the players and the payments already are. Meta's PWA path, YouTube Playables, Viverse, or app stores, these are all viable options. The web build is your front door, but you should consider retaining users on as many platforms as possible.

Where this is heading

The WebXR content space is getting more crowded and the layout keeps shifting, which in turn means traffic will not be constantly reliable. The hardware side is also rough right now. IDC expects VR and mixed-reality headset shipments to fall about 43% in 2025 and Meta's Reality Labs lost more than $19 billion across the year, enough that the "VR is dead" trend is back on its feet again. Attention and money are moving to smart glasses, which will likely not be a target for WebXR anytime soon. And yet games keep finding real audiences, which tells you the ceiling is about execution, not just the medium. The audience is smaller in XR, but the niche is well and alive.

I am still betting on the immersive web. New devices keep arriving and the shift toward glasses only makes the case stronger: the WebXR games that win next will be multi-modal. One build that plays on desktop, on a phone and in a headset, instead of XR-only. That is where the web has an edge nothing else can copy. This does mean that being exclusively XR in the short term does not seem like the most viable strategy. Even Gorilla Tag seems to be looking into expanding to mobile in some capacity.

Branding matters more now than it ever did. When discovery is broken and everyone is fighting for the same scarce attention, the thing people remember and come back to is a name they trust. The user retention and trust is worth more than any single revenue model.

Closing

dmnshd.gg is the wager underneath all of this: that you can build for the open immersive web, own your audience instead of renting it and stitch enough of these models together to make a real business. I do not have a clean proof yet. I have a direction and eight years of scar tissue, which is most of what anyone honest in this space actually has.

If you want to see what we are building on top of all that, go play something. And if WebXR is your rabbit hole too, WebXR vs native VR and the behind-the-scenes of building these games are good next stops.