Owlchemy Labs has done it again. The studio behind Job Simulator and Vacation Simulatortwo games that helped introduce players to virtual realityisn't resting easy on its laurels. With its latest omnidimensional diner/garage simulator Dimensional Double Shift, the company is once again shifting strategy with new ways to make VR games.But this time, its experiments aren't just technical or design-led in nature. In 2024 Owlchemy Labs released Dimensional Double Shift as a free-to-play open beta, a first for the company that packaged its previous games as standalone products. It's also the company's first-ever multiplayer game, joining the ranks of popular titles like Gorilla Tag and VR Chat. So while it's a little late to the multiplayer party, Owlchemy Labs "chief executive owl" Andrew Eiche told Game Developer in a chat at DICE 2025 that the game is part of the studio's strategy to keep up with the ever-shifting VR market.It's always worth checking in where great studios think the next opportunities areand in our chat, Eiche was glad to unpack how the studio is keeping up with new trends like social multiplayer while not sacrificing quality along the way.VR players want to hang out with their friendsAs Gorilla Tag has shown us, a growing number of VR users are surprisingly young, and not interested in the same kinds of games that dominated in the early days of the HTC Vive and Oculus Quest (now the Meta Quest). As has been harped on many times in conversations about Roblox and other games popular with the youths, the next generation of players is way more interested in "social experiences" than their predecessors.But that's a clinical (and maybe creepy) way of saying it. Eiche says when Owlchemy's been speaking with players, they hear it put more plainly and simply. "They're not even going 'can you add multiplayer?' It's more like, 'why can't I play with my friends?'"Image via Owlchemy Labs/Google.Image via Owlchemy Labs/Google.The subtle difference is that the first question is a request for a new feature, and the latter is an understanding that "playing with my friends" is a default expectation. So when Owlchemy started work on Dimensional Double Shift, getting players in groups with their friends was the number one goal.It's a goal that became more challenging when picturing the economics of VR. Owlchemy's previous premium games only cost $20, but if four players want to run their multidimensional diner/garage, the game would max out at around $80. "Consumers care about where their dollars go," he said. "So for us it was a product of necessity to be like, 'if we want to make a multiplayer game, we need people to not feel the friction of playing.'"Meanwhile, Owlchemy had observed that the Meta Quest Storecurrently the de facto leader in the VR landscapewas shifting to a more "App Store" style algorithmic system that surfaced more free-to-play games with in-app purchases. Owlchemy has no experience with free-to-play, so committing to a long dev cycle with no firm understanding of monetization was going to be difficult. Hence, the decision to launch in open beta."Our job is to make sure it doesn't shift to the dark part of [monetization]," he said, nodding to how some games rely on player compulsion to drive spending and keep them hooked (a topic many developers are examining lately).The open beta launch has done more for Owlchemy than just help them crack monetization, it's helped them learn where they should be putting focus on their game development. As they suspected, Dimensional Double Shift players do indeed prefer casual sci-fi diner/garage shenanigans over stiff competition (sometimes making their own ad hoc minigames). They also enjoy having game modes (referred to as "shifts") that do offer some competition, but it's not the center of the game.What did surprise them? When they launched, they didn't expect players would want to play with anyone other than people they already knew. But they quickly got feedback that players did in fact want matchmaking options. They wanted to meet people and experience omnidimensional life with new pals.VR multiplayer turns game development on its headDevelopers aren't likely to be surprised that switching from single-player to multiplayer development introduces a whole host of challenges. Eiche said that Owlchemy had to make major changes to its usual formula and "rip out" all of their previous tech solutions and build it all for multiplayer.The biggest breakthrough, he said, was in the world of player proximity. The "secret" to VR multiplayer up to this point is that player "spheres"the area around their avatarsare never supposed to touch. If they do, it can be violently disorienting or (or at worst, grounds for harassment. Eiche said that Owlchemy spent 3 years aggressively tackling that problem. In a game about working shoulder-to-shoulder in a diner/garage, it definitely helps to not have to give players wide spaces to avoid each other's bubbles.Other pain points, he said, include fluid physics and hand-tracking data. Continued improvements to hand-tracking capabilities allow players to be more communicative when in VRbut they also add millions of data points that have to be networked across up to 4 machines.Image via Owlchemy Labs/Google.Image via Owlchemy Labs/Google.Fluid physics, he said, almost didn't make it into the game. The team came to grips early on with the fact they didn't think they could implement the feature, despite it being a popular part of Cosmonious High, Job Simulator, and Vacation Simulator. But he said in Owlchemy's history, "we can't do that" often turns into more of a dare than a barrier."We confidently say we can't do something like 'we can't make sandwiches and pick them up. They have to be made on a sandwich maker,'" he said. "And then a dev gets a wild look in their eye, and they lose their mind, and they're like, 'I'm gonna do it. God damn it. We're gonna make fluids work.'"So features like fluids (and sandwiches) often make it into Owlchemy Games out of "spite," said Eiche.Where is VR headed?2024 was a rough year for the virtual reality marketplace. Though Camouflaj's Batman Arkham Shadow was a standout success of the holiday season, analysis indicates that Meta Quest sales slowed down during what should have been the busiest month for the headset.Meanwhile Meta has signaled it's scrutinizing the billions of dollars its Reality Labs division has burned away, and laid off Reality Labs workers in June of last year. The Meta quest isn't the only headset on the market, but it is the most popular, and slowing sales could be frustrating news for VR developers.Eiche said he's not fazed. Despite being owned by Meta competitor Google (itself in the process of rolling out Android XR, its answer to Meta, Valve, and Sony Interactive Entertainment's VR platforms), Owlchemy's remained a multiplatform studio, focused on wide releases over pushing parent company hardware. He said he's excited for the potential of Android XR, though Owlchemy's PR representative stressed to us that he was speaking solely as the boss of the VR studio, not as an employee of Google.He does think some VR firms have lost the plot a little when it comes to what VR is supposed to be "for." "People don't like technology," he argued, a surprisingly bold claim given how technology has invaded everyday life. "But that's fine. It's just a necessary thing they interact withlike a dishwasheras part of being an adult.""The thing that we have to answer as an industry is 'why is this so valuable that it's worth putting something hot and heavy and a little bit isolating [on your head?'"It's why he's not a fan of the idea of "general computing" (using VR for ordinary desktop tasks like spreadsheets and email) as a primary force for VRat least not yet. "Fully immersive stuff is actually the answer to that," he said, referring to software experiences that are wholly unique to VR. He thinks VR users might be open to those kind of tasksbut they'd be better served as gentle interruptions of the fully-immersed VR experience, not lesser versions of what players do outside their headsets.VR studios have been particularly hard hit by the mass game industry layoffs of 2023-2025, with some devs saying it's an "uncertain year" for the field. Eiche wouldn't be a great chief executive owl if he told us he thought the sky was falling on VR, but it is fair to say the field's facing challengesthe scale of them is just still being sorted out.If Dimensional Double Shift is a useful reference point, there is still room for developers to find stable footing in this experimental fieldeven if you sometimes need a bit of "spite" to find it.