App Lab has now been merged into the Meta Horizon Store, the new name for the more open Quest Store.
Apps formerly in App Lab have been moved into the main store, meaning they’re now publicly findable when searching, and they show up in categories and algorithmic feeds.
Meta says store apps will still need to meet “basic technical, content, and privacy requirements”, but will no longer be rejected based on a subjective taste or quality basis.
Meta first announced it planned to do this back in April. Last month the company said the transition would happen on August 5, but in reality that date started a gradual transition, and today Meta sent out emails to App Lab developers to confirm that the transition is complete.
For developers who still want to signal that their app isn’t quite ready for a mainstream audience, Meta has added a new “Early Access” tag for developers to use, a similar strategy to Steam.
David Heaney
The rebrand is part of the Quest software platform’s wider transition to “Horizon”, a move that will also see the operating system made available to third-party headsets under its new name Horizon OS.
Horizon Store’s more open approach will come as a major relief for independent XR developers currently struggling to get reach for their apps, and help Meta live up to its lofty claims of being the “open alternative” to Apple Vision. However, it could also harm discoverability of existing store apps as a wave of new entries arrive to compete, and make content recommendations from outlets like UploadVR more important than ever.
