Gorilla Tag Studio Another Axiom Pushes Orion Drift Toward 200-Player Stations

Another Axiom, the small studio behind the viral hit Gorilla Tag, has laid out how it is scaling its follow-up game Orion Drift, and the numbers show a deliberate climb rather than another overnight explosion. In an August 4 developer blog post, Meta detailed how the studio is building toward 200-player space stations in Orion Drift, with Studio Design Director Jonathan Hamel confirming the game currently runs at 75 players per station.

“A living, breathing world of 200 players per station is our goal. We’re well on our way, with the current 75 players per station,” Hamel said.

From App Lab Curiosity to $100 Million Hit

Gorilla Tag’s own trajectory explains why Meta is happy to give Another Axiom the microphone. Gorilla Tag made $26 million in revenue from in-app purchases while it was on App Lab, having launched in Steam Early Access and on SideQuest for Quest headsets in February 2021 before reaching App Lab a month later.

That momentum did not fade. The primate locomotion game vaulted into the top spot as the most-rated game on the Quest Store, surpassing even the Meta-owned rhythm game Beat Saber. By June 2024, the game’s footprint had grown far beyond its App Lab origins.

The game was popularized through social media and, by June 2024, received 10 million total players and crossed $100 million in revenue. Reviews climbed alongside it, past six figures on the Quest Store.

Ready at Dawn Veterans Rebuild an Echo VR Idea

Another Axiom’s staff sheet explains a lot about where Orion Drift came from. The team is made up of veterans from Ready at Dawn and the creators of Echo VR, known for building expansive virtual playgrounds, pushing the limits of physicality and betting big on community. Founder and CEO Kerestell Smith is himself part of that lineage.

Smith was a pro Echo VR player, which is how he originally met COO David Yee and CTO David Neubelt back when they worked at Meta and Ready at Dawn, respectively. When Meta shut down Echo VR, that history turned into motive for a new project rather than a eulogy.

Read also: High on Life VR Confirmed for Quest, PSVR2 and SteamVR in 2027

Driftball and the Push Past Beta

Orion Drift swaps gorillas for robots but keeps the arm-swing locomotion that made Gorilla Tag distinctive. It is a large-scale online VR game that drops players onto massive, seamless space stations with up to 200 players together, casting them as a Drifter, a robot who was once one of Earth’s premiere athletes.

Design Lead Patrick Lipo pointed to the game’s signature mode as proof the studio is building more than a locomotion demo. “We’ve created a space station that highlights our arena sport, Driftball, as well as a sprawling playground of physical challenges to satisfy the skills of climbers, freerunners and skaters,” Lipo said. The result is already showing up in the charts, with the title climbing into Quest’s top 25 most popular games.

Capture the Beacon Arrives as First Big Update

Orion Drift’s growth has come with regular content drops rather than a single launch spike. Another Axiom shipped its first big update since early access launch with a new mini-game called Capture the Beacon, built around moving a rod-shaped beacon to a team’s base with no player cap and no time limit, so anyone can join the action mid-match.

Hamel framed the studio’s whole approach, from Gorilla Tag to Orion Drift, around one line: “Start with what players care about. Then build the world around them.” On current numbers, that means a robot sport aiming to more than double its current 75-player stations toward 200.

Reported from

• Meta (developers.meta.com)
• Road to VR
• UploadVR
• Another Axiom