Social VR & Sandbox Worlds

VRChat, Resonite, Rec Room, Garry's Mod, Roblox — community-built social and sandbox spaces.

Where the persistent-social-world / user-generated-content experience lives. For VR / XR development (engines + SDKs) see Game VR / XR on the developer side. For PC launchers see PC launchers. For cloud-stream-VR scenarios (a niche) see Cloud gaming.

The 2024–26 reality: VRChat still owns mainstream social VR by user count and creator economy, despite the Easy Anti-Cheat rollout in 2022 that pushed power-users toward forks. Resonite (the Neos VR successor) has grown into a credible technical-creator alternative. Rec Room owns the casual / family / Quest audience. Roblox is its own multi-billion-dollar planet.

★ ★ VRChat — free + paid VRC+ (~$10/mo) — Win + Quest standalone + macOS (newer); Unity-based. The default social VR. Tens of thousands of user-built worlds, custom avatars (Unity SDK upload), instances, Friends-only / private rooms. Easy Anti-Cheat is enforced — flagging because it removed mod-loader-shape avatar features (VRCMods etc.) that older guides reference.
★ Resonite — free; Win + Linux; the open-architecture successor to Neos VR (after Neos's split in late 2023). In-world live editing, Protoflux visual scripting, real-time collaborative world building. The technical-creator pick. Community-led, federated.
NeosVR — free; legacy / split-fork sibling to Resonite. Most active dev moved to Resonite.
Rec Room — free + paid premium; cross-platform (Quest, PSVR2, PC, mobile, Xbox/PS). The casual / family / kid-friendly social VR with first-party games (Paintball, Quest mode).
VTime XR — paid; smaller social-meetup VR.
Horizon Worlds (Meta) — free; Meta's official social VR. Lukewarm reception; underperforms VRChat / Rec Room on creator engagement.
AltspaceVR — discontinued (Microsoft, 2023). Listed for context.

Sandbox / UGC platforms

Garry's Mod — paid (~$10); Source-engine sandbox; the OG. Two-decade community of game modes (TTT, DarkRP, Murder), addons, and mods. Steam Workshop is the distribution layer.
Roblox — free + paid Robux; Win/Mac/Mobile/Quest/Xbox. A platform more than a game — millions of community-built experiences. Demographically skewed young; non-trivial economy. See Specialized engines (Roblox Studio) on the dev side.
Minecraft (servers / multiplayer) — paid; not strictly social-VR but the original sandbox MMO. Modded servers (Forge / Fabric) and Realms.
VRChat worlds in particular — increasingly the "Garry's Mod of VR" — clubs, escape rooms, social games.

Avatar creation / pipeline

Unity + VRChat SDK — free; the default avatar upload toolchain.
VRoid Studio — free; anime-style avatar generator; exports VRM.
Ready Player Me — free + API; cross-platform avatar generator; widely used in social-VR ecosystems.
Mixamo — free (Adobe); auto-rig + animations for character models.
Resonite's in-world avatar editor — free; built-in.

Communities & culture

VRChat Discord servers / world communities — free; the actual social fabric.
Resonite community — free; smaller, technical, Discord-led.
Rec Room "Rooms" subreddit / Discord — free.
Roblox developer / player community — vast.

Hardware notes

Quest 3 / Quest 3S — paid (~$300-500); standalone PCVR via Link / Air Link / Steam Link / Virtual Desktop. The dominant social-VR headset.
PSVR 2 (PC mode 2024) — paid; works on PC since the 2024 Sony adapter; Rec Room supports it.
Valve Index — paid (~$1000); aging but still the high-end PCVR pick. Index 2 / Deckard rumored.
Bigscreen Beyond / Pimax — paid premium; enthusiast PCVR.

Pick this if…

Default mainstream social VR: VRChat.
Open / hackable / technical creator-focused VR: Resonite.
Family-friendly / kids / cross-platform: Rec Room.
Source-engine sandbox classic: Garry's Mod.
You want to build an experience with a built-in audience: Roblox.
VR avatar generator, no Unity: VRoid + Ready Player Me.