After the Fall (2021), the recently released co-op zombie shooter, has done pretty well for itself. Developers Vertigo Games announced it not only surpassed the $1 million mark within the first 24 hours of going live on all major VR platforms earlier this month, but it’s also put early VR game revenues to shame in the process.
The studio says in a press statement that After the Fall managed to earn $1.4 million within first 24 hours of release when the game launched on PSVR, Steam and the Quest Store for Quest 2 on December 9th.
For comparison, the studio says After the Fall did more in 24 hours than its early co-op zombie shooter Arizona Sunshine (2016) did in a month when it launched on the first generation of VR headsets back in late 2016.
As one of the higher profile VR games of its day, those numbers are probably indicative of the sort of performance many top-selling VR titles experienced back then. Job Simulator, arguably the most popular game of the era, made headlines in January 2017 when it broke $3 million in revenue after its initial launch on Steam nine months prior, subsequently arriving in late 2016 on PSVR and Oculus Rift with the entrance of Touch controllers.
Development on After the Fall hasn’t gone without its challenges. The game experienced multiple delays after it was first announced in 2019, something many VR titles suffered as a result of lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
As for post-launch woes, the studio has since issued major updates to fix things like locomotion and weapon handling issues that rendered the PSVR version of the game such a sub-par experience that Vertigo Games publicly urged early access players on that platform to not play the game at all until it had been patched.
Still, we describe it as “VR’s best stab at Left 4 Dead“—including seamless cross-play across SteamVR, PSVR, and Meta Quest 2—which has put After the Fall among the top games we’ve reviewed this year. We gave it a solid [8/10] for a more-than-competent execution of the four-player co-op shooter genre, and for bringing a solid opportunity to team up to take on massive hordes of stumbling blood-soaked zombies.