How to prepare your App Lab app for the Meta Quest Horizon Store
The time has come. Starting from August, 5th, all the applications published on Meta App Lab will become official apps on the Meta Horizon (aka Quest) Store! We are very close to the deadline and you must be sure that your app is ready for that. But what do you need to do? Let Tony tell you everything you need to know…
App Lab is going to disappear
App Lab has been for a few years the indie store of the Meta Quest. All the famous titles went directly to the main store, while the indie ones could only be published on App Lab, where they were available for the people who knew the exact name or link but were not discoverable for generic users (they were a bit like Youtube unlisted videos). App Lab has been a step forward from the previous publication strategy by Meta, which was about having only a hyper-curated official store. Still, it always felt very limited to us indie developers: it was like a B-league store where your titles could not be found unless you were very good at creating a community somewhere else (e.g. like Gorilla Tag did) or you were already famous somehow (like Roblox did). It was very frustrating, because not being discoverable meant that it was very hard to succeed and monetize your game: some games did the jump to the main store, but most of them stayed in this purgatory forever.
Finally, after many years, Meta fulfilled its promise of removing App Lab. I guess the competition imposed by Apple and Google forced Meta to speed up the process to ensure to have a richer ecosystem in which its developers are happy (and so do not migrate to other platforms). But whatever the reason, the result is that finally, all the developers have equal discoverability chances on the Meta Horizon Store (which is the new name of the Meta Quest Store). Now it’s a fair game, and thanks to this, many indie VR developers will have higher chances of succeeding. I’m personally very happy about it.
The migration of existing App Lab experiences
But what happens to the titles already published on App Lab? What do you have to do if you have a title there? You may have a few questions and I’m here to help you with that.
First of all, existing App Lab experiences will all be published in phases on the official Meta Horizon Store. They will finally become discoverable like all the other official apps there like Beat Saber. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on why you had an app there. If you have published a game that you want to see played by the biggest number possible of people, it’s a good thing. If you had there a secret foot fetish VR experience that you wanted to play just with the people of your Foot Fetish Saturday Club, then probably you don’t want it to be listed publicly and this merging is a problem. Let’s see what to do, case by case.
You have an experience ready to be played by the masses
The first case is that you have an experience that is ready for the mass market, and you are just happy that it is put on the Horizon Store as is. In this case, you have to do nothing. The experience will just be put on the store on August, 5th. Easy Peasy.
Actually, there is a little thing you have to do. You have to verify that the application complies with the latest requirements for apps that go on the Horizon Store. Remember that App Lab experiences had looser requirements than official store ones. So now that your app graduates to the main store, you must adhere to all the specifications of the main store. Meta advises in particular to comply with these rules:
- All currently required App Lab VRCs
- VRC.Quest.Functional.4
- VRC.Quest.Asset.1
- VRC.Quest.Asset.2
- VRC.Quest.Asset.3
- VRC.Quest.Asset.4
- VRC.Quest.Asset.9
Most of these guidelines are about assets for the store, to ensure that the application looks well on the listings. In case the app doesn’t comply with some of the new requirements, I guess it will be temporarily suspended and you’ll receive an email from a Meta reviewer asking you to fix the issues and re-submit the app.
I did this procedure with “The Unity Cube”, my most famous application. It is just a cube… so there are no updates of any sort I should do. The application is ready for the store as is, so I just did nothing. It will be interesting to see if Meta will complain about a plain cube app being on the store. Actually, there are no guidelines prohibiting it, so it should be fine. Plus, it’s now a famous application that is part of the history of VR, so deserves to be on the Horizon Store. (Check the update section at the end of the article to see what happened with the submission of The Cube)
You have a nice experience, but it is in early access
Early Access does not currently exist on the Meta Horizon Store, so we who had an early access app just published it on App Lab and let our community try it. Now that App Lab is disappearing, Meta is introducing the Early Access flag for existing and new applications.
If your app is currently on App Lab, but you think it’s not ready to be considered a full release, you must flag it as Early Access. Notice that you MUST do that before August, 4th. On August, 5th, all the apps that have not be marked as Early Access, will go to the official store as full releases. After August, 5th, you can still publish Early Access applications, but they should be new applications, not existing ones. So if you have an existing title you want to mark as early access, you have to do it now.
To make a game Early Access, you have to:
- Log in to your Meta Developer Dashboard
- Select the application you want to mark as Early Access
- In the upper right corner of the Overview tab about that app, you have to click on Edit App
- In the App Metadata -> Specs section there is an Early Access section
- Select Enable
- Click on Save Changes
- Click on Submit for review
- When the metadata will be reviewed and approved, you set up its release from the main dashboard of the application
I’ve noticed that if you just do this operation, the submission is approved immediately. If you are also changing other sections of the metadata, the submission will go through a manual review process.
Of course, also in this case, the application should comply with all the guidelines of the Meta Horizon Store exactly as the apps you publish as full releases. So check the links I posted in the previous section and verify that your app fits the requirements.
I did this operation for our fitness game HitMotion: Reloaded. It is a demo, so it should be marked as Early Access when it will be on the main store.
Your application should stay private
There are some cases where App Lab experiences are meant to stay private. I did this a few times: since the experience was unlisted and no one could find it without a link, App Lab was a safe place to publish “secret” applications. Before I joked about the foot fetish thing, but a more serious use case of this was enterprise applications. Some small companies I know have published apps on App Lab and shared the link (or keys) to their B2B customers, so that they could access it. But of course, these companies do not want these applications to become public: they were meant to be used just with a small group of people.
If you have an application of this kind, you have to delist the application. Delisting does not mean deleting, it just means that the application will not be listed on the main store. People will still be able to access it via direct links, or via beta release channels, or key distribution. So let’s say that it means putting the application on an even more restricting conditions than App Lab, but it should work for most of the above-mentioned use cases.
To delist an application, you have to:
- Log in to your Meta Developer Dashboard
- Select the application you want to delist
- Click on “Remove app listing”
- Confirm the delisting
Remember to do this before your app goes live on August, 5th. I had to do this for some prototypes I did.
Additional operations
Above I mentioned the main things you have to do. But while doing the process today (I’m Italian, so I waited until the last minute before doing this operation myself), I’ve learned a few things that may be useful for you, too.
Remember to verify your organization
In case you have not verified the organization that published the application, you can not edit the metadata, so you can not mark your app as Early Access. I had this situation for the Unity Cube, for instance, also because it is published with the account of my first startup, which we never verified on the Meta store.
Meta will show you a big error message about it. You have to follow the instructions and submit some documents to prove your organization is actually a valid company. But what if your organization is not a real company? Many indie games are made by a team of people who are not officially incorporated as a real company. In this case, the trick is to verify yourself as an admin of the organization. You have to submit a valid ID document (I picked up the driver’s license because it is the one giving the least information to Meta) and then Meta is going to approve you within 48 hours (Actually, this is the upper bound: I’ve been verified in 10 minutes, probably by an automatic system). After you have been verified, you can finally edit your app metadata. Be careful of the timing: if your verification does not arrive before August, 5th, your app will go to the main store as is, because you are not entitled to modify its data.
Some additional data may be required
While I was flagging HitMotion: Reloaded as early access, I noticed that Meta did not let me save the changes, so I could not submit the new metadata manifest with the Early Access flag. I was very puzzled about it, but then I noticed that Meta introduced new data entries in the metadata form since the last time I published HitMotion. Since these entries were empty, Meta did not let me publish the app (I suggest Meta explain this more clearly, maybe marking these fields in red). So what I did was fill all the entries, specifying the category and the genres of the game. I also had to confirm that my game has no social features. After that, I could finalize my submission. Notice that since I changed a few things in this submission, it has not been automatically approved, and will undergo a review.
Improve discoverability after the store release
App Lab apps were not discoverable, so they could not specify their keywords. When your application becomes an official Quest Store app, remember to set them by modifying the manifest (again).
The keywords are especially very important to make your game more discoverable: for instance, I will put for HitMotion: Reloaded some keywords like “boxing”, “workout”, and “fitness”, so that people looking for a workout game will find it. Notice that my game does not have anything related to fitness in its title, so if I do not specify the right keywords, almost no one will find it when looking for a fitness game.
Remember also to update the description of your game to make it more search-friendly, add the comfort level of your app, specify its category and genres, and upload more captivating store pictures and videos. You will be in the main store, you must do everything you can to make your game discoverable and attractive for the Horizon Store users.
I suggest doing this on August, 5th: some things, like the keyword selection or the comfort level specifications, can only be done when your application is on the official Meta Horizon store.
Prepare for an eventual increase in users
If you play well your cards, more people will find your game, so more people will play your game. Make sure that your application is able to support an increased number of users. In particular, check your backend performances, your multiplayer subscription (e.g. Photon Fusion), and your cloud expenses (e.g. if you are using AI services) to make sure that your app does not crash or does not lead you to unsustainable costs.
Further references
Meta has written an official blog post where it talks about the migration. You can find it here: Get Your App Ready for the Meta Horizon Store (oculus.com)
The consequence for indie developers
The removal of App Lab and the unification of all apps under a single store is an amazing piece of news for all XR developers. But this is not the silver bullet that will make every indie game successful.
Remember that all the biggest app stores (e.g. Google Play) have no “App Lab” and let every developer publish everything. But in these stores, the competition for visibility is fierce, and there are millions of applications that never saw a single user. This shows you how even with just one “fair” store, you still have a very high chance of failing with your indie application.
Even if your app is more discoverable, this does not mean that the users will actually play it: for instance, if a user is looking for a fitness game, he will probably choose Supernatural over my Hitmotion game, for a few reasons like that Supernatural is more famous and has more content.
In fact, when a few weeks ago Meta started to make App Lab content a bit more discoverable, a few indie devs and I noticed no spike in the download count. Now that there is a full publication, I expect a little jump in the downloads for existing games, but not a huge spike. Considering the upcoming launch of Quest 3s, I also expect a big spike around Christmas days, but nothing more. So keep your expectations realistic and do not expect to become rich overnight with a game you published on App Lab 2 years ago.
But still, this is a great opportunity. Finally, we will be able to do proper marketing for our game and play with the same rules as the big titles like Beat Saber. Finally, more indie developers will see their games become successful.
Good luck, VR indie devs out there!
UPDATE (2024.08.06): Checking the status of my applications after the deadline, I’ve noticed no one of them has been published on the Horizon Store, yet. I guess that Meta is reviewing them and publishing them as soon as they are approved. In fact, the release on the Horizon Store will be done “in phases” according to Meta’s wording, so it’s not sure when every app will be reviewed and migrated. I’ve changed some wording of this article to make this clearer.
UPDATE (2024.08.23): Meta emailed all developers to inform them that the transition from App Lab to the main store is completed. I verified that all the applications for which I worked on the transition using the methods I’ve written in this post have been approved and now they are successfully on the official Meta Horizon Store, some of them in Early Access, some of them as full releases. The developer dashboard has also been updated with new functionalities.
And yes, all of this means that… THE UNITY CUBE IS NOW ON THE OFFICIAL META STORE!!!
(PS If you want to make me happy, check the titles I mentioned in this article: HitMotion: Reloaded is a challenging short workout game, while The Unity Cube is… a masterpiece)
(Header image by Meta)
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