How to apply for the $12M fund of the Pico Developer Incentive Program

After I published my detailed article about the launch of the Pico 4 in Europe, many developers reached out to me to understand how to apply for the announced $12M fund for developers, dubbed Developer Incentive Program. I reached out to Pico to have further explanations, so now I can tell you!

Pico Developer Incentive Program 

Just a quick recap in case you missed it: during the Pico Keynote a few weeks ago, Leland Hedges announced the Pico Developer Incentive Program, a program to support developers that are interested in publishing XR experiences on the Pico Store. The program is meant to give developers not only support and hardware but also funding. Bytedance has set a $12M fund for this operation, and every content that gets approved can receive up to $2M.

Of course, after the announcement, many indie VR developers got interested in the program but they couldn’t find any information about it online, so they started asking me how to apply for it. I so reached out to Pico to have some details.

Developer Incentive Program details

A Pico spokesperson told me that interested developers can apply for the funding starting from October, 8th 2022 (which is passed by) at the page of the Pico Developer Program. Through that page, you can access an application form, in which you have to describe at first your company, and then the project you want Pico to support you with.

Pico clarified with me that “This incentive program only applies to experienced VR developers making B2C content (ie. games, entertainment, utility applications) AND new games that haven’t been released before. For released games, if the developers are interested in bringing them to PICO, they should contact PICO BDs”. If you have a look at the page linked above, it is stressed there again that “This is not a program for beginner VR developers”. My opinion is that Pico is looking for high-quality content to publish, and so it is not interested to fund experiences that turn out to be mediocre due to the lack of experience of the developers. This makes sense, if Pico wants a store that can compete with the Quest Store.

Pico also told me that if you are approved in the program, you may also have access to other opportunities (like getting awards or prizes), so joining it you don’t have only money, but also other possibilities.

According to the FAQs, Pico reviews the submissions once a week, but I have already been warned that due to the many requests got after the announcement, response times will be much longer.

Final suggestion

As an indie game developer myself (please, check out our game on App Lab!) who has struggled in finding an interested publisher of VR games, I know how it is hard to find funding for developing immersive content. So, opportunities like this should not be wasted. If you are a development team, you have already experience in shipping VR games, and you have maybe also already a prototype for your next title, my suggestion is to try enrolling in this program to try to get some funding for your game. I cross my fingers you can get the money you need to make the next Beat Saber!

(Header image by Pico)