Animal Company, the free-to-play early access game on Quest, nabbed the top spot for Quest’s highest-earning game this week, overtaking long-time viral hit Gorilla Tag in the weekly charts. Now, developer Wooster Games tells Road to VR it’s not only already profitable, but Animal Company has surpassed one million monthly active users (MAU), cementing its status as VR’s next big F2P game.

Launched in early access on Quest last July, Animal Company takes inspiration from Gorilla Tag by including its arm-powered locomotion mechanic and low-poly animal avatars, but it switches things up by essentially replicating the game loop of Lethal Company—which is where the name comes from.

Like Lethal Company, it’s full of weird places to explore and loot to collect, which can be brought back to base for profit. Monsters and traps are everywhere though, with each creature presenting unique challenges, requiring teams to employ stealth, strategy, and cooperation to avoid or overcome them.

“We took inspiration from viral multiplayer hits like Gorilla Tag, Yeeps, and Among Us VR, and during a hackathon, we prototyped VR experiences influenced by the trends we saw in games like Lethal Company and Content Warning,” Wooster Games tells Road to VR.

And it appears to be resonating with Quest owners, as the game took the number one spot as Quest’s top-earning title this week, passing Another Axiom’s Gorilla Tag. As VR’s most successful game to day, Gorilla Tag has been powerhouse ever since it launched on the main Quest store in late 2022, posting over $100 million in gross revenue last summer.

Granted, Meta only calculates the chart on a week-by-week basis, so while Animal Company clearly hasn’t generated more lifetime revenue than Gorilla Tag—that would be a tall order for any game—it’s a sign of things to come.

Like many F2P games, Animal Company’s revenue comes entirely from in-app purchases, which not only includes specific cosmetic items, but also the game’s in-world currency, Company Coins, which can be used to buy a host of seasonal cosmetics.

While the studio isn’t sharing specific revenue numbers right now, Wooster says Animal Company’s recent success has left the studio in “a strong and healthy position,” highlighting its recent updates—Tech Tree, Mining, and the Planetarium—which have all driven “significant growth in engagement and activity.”

“Since launching monetization in September, our revenue has grown consistently month-over-month, more than doubling since December,” the studio tells Road to VR. “The real standout stat, though, is our player base—Animal Company now has over 1 million MAU, a 4x increase since December.”

Wooster says the game’s rapid success came down to a few key factors, including the holiday season bringing more players online, new Quest 3 owners, and a Winter update, which brought new content, such as a new map, items, and exclusive holiday cosmetics. And even coming off the holiday boost, things still seem to be humming over at Animal Company. Wooster says that February, typically a quieter month, saw both a rise in usage and revenue.

Those technical factors would help any game succeed, surely, although one of the biggest boons undoubtedly comes down to how Animal Company co-opts Gorilla Tag’s movement mechanics—something players already implicitly understand, albeit with a fresh and interesting gameplay loop that centers around social, community-driven gameplay.

And like Gorilla Tag—you really can’t talk about Animal Company without mentioning Gorilla Tag—social media influence has been a big part of the game’s rise in popularity, with the studio citing TikTok and YouTube as “a huge driver of Animal Company’s reach.”

“On TikTok alone, the #AnimalCompany hashtags have racked up over 410 million views, with some videos hitting 24M+ views. The game was designed to create ‘viral moments’ that players naturally want to share, and its sandbox-style gameplay—packed with unique items, weapons, and cosmetics—gives creators endless ways to make engaging content.”

To boot, besides a series of small ad tests, which were under $1,000, Wooster says it’s spent substantially nothing on paid marketing, focusing instead on strong relationships with creators, from up-and-coming talent to established names like Jmancurly.

“We’ve found that a game offering content that translates into views is far more valuable to creators than direct sponsorships. Paid promotions often feel inauthentic and don’t drive the same sustained engagement as organic success.”

So far, it’s been less about paid adverts, and more about actively courting its community and the cadre of influencers creating Animal Company content. The studio recently released an invite-only program, called ‘The Drip Department’, which that gives members early access to updates, exclusive content, and more to help them grow their channels alongside the game.

“To validate our ideas, we launched our own TikTok and YouTube channels to test whether we could generate viral moments ourselves. The response was immediate—before launch, we gathered our first 100 community members through social media. A week after launch, that number hit 1,000. Six months later, we had over 100,000 members, and today, Animal Company has organically amassed nearly 500 million views.”

More importantly though, Animal Company is doing all of this at the best possible time, it seems. Last month, Meta confirmed a growing demographic shift amid last year’s release of Quest 3S, which has not only seen a rise in F2P content on the Quest platform, but also revenue generated from in-app purchases.

“With more players engaging in F2P experiences and in-game economies, Animal Company’s growth aligns with this shift,” the studio says. “The success of viral, player-driven games like ours shows that the Quest platform is entering a new era—where social engagement and creator-driven content are just as crucial as traditional game marketing. We expect this trend to continue shaping the future of VR.”

Whether Animal Company will ever surpass Gorilla Tag in long-term popularity remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that its explosive growth signals a new era for VR multiplayer games—one where social-driven, F2P experiences dominate the landscape. With over a million active players and a fast-growing community, Animal Company has already proven it’s more than a passing trend. The question now isn’t if it will last, but just how far it can go.

– – — – –

Some more data for context: Gorilla Tag launched on Quest’s main store in late 2022 after driving hype on SideQuest and the now-defunct App Lab for nearly a year. The game exploded in growth in late 2023 when the studio announced it had topped 2.3 million MAU, attracting over 700,000 users on Christmas Day that year.

Last June, the Gorilla Tag team updated that figure, saying the game had then topped 10 million lifetime users, one million daily active users (DAU), and three million MAU. At the time of this writing, Animal Company has garnered over 60,000 user reviews on the Horizon Store, while Gorilla Tag sits above 140,000.