VRChat ‘Sutanmi’ Boom Drives 30% Growth, Tops 130K Users!
In 2024, a massive VRChat boom was ignited in Japan by the superstar streamer “Sutanmi Japan.” How much did this phenomenon increase the global population of social VR users? How has the proportion of Japanese users and the gender distribution changed?
In this article, the author “Virtual Girl Nem,” a dedicated VRChat user, award-winning author of Metaverse Evolution Theory (Gijutsu-Hyoronsha) with the “IT Engineer Book Grand Prize” (Shoei-sha), and appointed member of AIST’s Avatar International Standardization Committee in 2024, provides an in-depth analysis of the latest statistics as of January 2025.
- This article is a quick English version based on AI translation. The original Japanese version can be found here.
VRChat Surpasses 130,000 CCU on New Year’s Day 2025, Following the ‘Sutanmi’ Boom
“Social VR” refers to services that allow users to immerse themselves in an online, three-dimensional virtual space using VR goggles, where they can communicate through avatars. A prime example is “VRChat.” Since Mark Zuckerberg announced the rebranding of Facebook to “Meta” in October 2021 — commonly referred to as the “Meta Declaration” — the term “metaverse” has garnered significant attention. While there is no definitive definition of the metaverse, the author’s book Metaverse Evolution Theory (Gijutsu-Hyoronsha) defines it as a three-dimensional virtual space that fulfills seven key criteria, including “economic potential” and “immersion.”
In June 2024, the prominent streamer “Sutanmi Japan,” who is also active as an actor and model, began streaming from VRChat, sparking an unprecedented VRChat boom in Japan. Although VRChat had previously garnered public attention on multiple occasions, this time was different. Through Sutanmi’s influence, the appeal of VRChat residents and events became a focal point, strongly encouraging new users to join. The author has personally noticed a clear increase in encounters with new users in VRChat. When asked about their motivation, nearly all of them consistently answered, “I got interested after watching Sutanmi.”
Is the increase in new users a phenomenon unique to Japan? How has the global population of social VR users changed?
At VRChat, it has become an annual tradition to set new records for concurrent users during the year-end and New Year period, when users from around the world gather. Let’s first take a look at this number, as it is the most accurate metric available. According to “VRChat API Metrics,” a project by Swedish user Foorack (風楽) that archives official VRChat API data to preserve the platform’s history, VRChat surpassed 130,000 concurrent users on January 1, 2025, at 14:54 (Japan time), setting a new record of 136,567 concurrent users.
The record for New Year’s Day 2024 was 105,991 concurrent users, marking an approximate 30% year-over-year increase. Notably, last year, the VRChat official team announced that the sudden surge in user numbers exceeded expectations, causing server overload and a temporary service outage. However, despite an even greater influx of users this year, there were no major issues, and the author was able to play smoothly during the peak hours of New Year’s Day. It seems that the server enhancements VRChat had been working on paid off.
Growth Expected to Accelerate Further with the “Quest 3S” in 2025
Here is a graph summarizing the trend of VRChat’s concurrent users up to January 2025, based on VRChat API Metrics. Even at the average level, you can see an approximate 30% increase from January 2024, when the number of concurrent users first surpassed 100,000, to the present.
In addition to the previously mentioned “Sutanmi” boom in Japan, the launch of Meta’s next-generation, mass-market VR headset, the “Quest 3S,” in October 2024 in various countries likely contributed to the growth. The Quest 3S is the successor to the “Quest 2,” which shipped 18 million units (source: Forbes) and played a pivotal role in popularizing VR on a massive scale. It offers a “6DoF + PCVR-compatible full VR experience” with 4K resolution and high performance, all at an affordable price point in the ¥40,000 range.
In the graph, the orange line represents access numbers for the Steam version (PCVR and desktop), while the blue line includes the total, which combines Android versions (standalone Quest, mobile versions, etc.) and versions from the Meta Store. Following the release of the Quest 2 in 2021, the “metaverse boom” began, leading to an explosive increase in access numbers for “non-Steam versions,” including standalone Quest users, which now account for the majority. With the Quest 3S, a similar trend is expected. Meta is likely to launch large-scale promotional campaigns backed by its substantial financial resources, which may result in another significant acceleration of VR adoption in 2025. The author believes that this could mark the year of a “second metaverse boom.”
The Global Population of VRChat and Social VR Reaches Millions
What about the global population of VRChat and social VR, beyond just peak concurrent user counts?
Since VRChat does not disclose its Monthly Active Users (MAU), exact figures are unknown. However, given the recent peak concurrent user count of 130,000, the author estimates that the total user base is likely in the range of “several million,” approximately dozens of times larger.
According to data from Similarweb, which tracks web traffic, the monthly visits to “vrchat.com” in December 2024 totaled 10.23 million. While this figure includes visitors to the website and not just social VR users, it aligns reasonably well with the estimated scale. Additionally, web traffic has increased approximately 35% year-over-year compared to the 7.6 million visits recorded in the same month in 2023. This further supports the observation that VRChat’s user base has grown significantly.
Comparing this with estimates by other industry players, metaverse business consultant Nic Mitham (though without revealing his estimation method) suggested a global VRChat user base of 4 million as of Q1 2022. This figure aligns reasonably well with current trends. Meanwhile, the metaverse media outlet New World Notes speculated in 2023 that VRChat might announce a Monthly Active User (MAU) count of 10 million, but such an announcement did not occur in 2023 or 2024. It is likely that the actual MAU figure has not yet reached 10 million.
What about the global population of social VR users as a whole?
According to the Social VR Lifestyle Survey 2023, which surveyed approximately 2,000 respondents who use VR headsets for social VR, over 90% indicated that they “often use” VRChat, regardless of their geographic region. Therefore, assuming that VRChat users represent about 90% of the total social VR population, the overall scale of social VR users is estimated to be roughly “several million,” similar to the population of VRChat itself.
Japanese Users Account for 26.8% of VRChat Traffic
What proportion of VRChat users are Japanese?
According to Similarweb, which tracks web traffic, 26.8% of visits to vrchat.com in December 2024 came from Japan, ranking second after the United States. This is a dramatic increase from the 12.9% recorded the previous year, representing a year-on-year growth of approximately 2.1 times. This surge is likely due to the influence of the “Sutanmi” boom, significantly increasing Japan’s presence on the global stage.
While these figures represent the proportion of web traffic to vrchat.com rather than VRChat users directly, it is reasonable to assume that they are closely correlated.
According to Similarweb, 27% of web traffic to vrchat.com in December 2024 came from female users, while 73% came from male users. Although males still dominate, the percentage of female users has been steadily rising, up from 24% in the previous year and 21% two years ago. This trend suggests that as VRChat becomes more mainstream, the proportion of female users continues to grow.
Do You Want Your VR Identity to Be Your Main Identity?
The population of the metaverse is rapidly increasing. How do its residents choose to live in this evolving world?
To investigate how social VR users perceive their identities, I collaborated with Swiss anthropologist Lyudmila Bredikhina in 2024 to conduct a qualitative study titled Identity in the Metaverse (Nem x Mila, 2024). One particularly striking question was: “In the future, would you want your social VR identity to become your main identity in your life rather than your physical world identity?” Among the respondents, 13% answered that their social VR identity is already their main identity, and 26% said they would like it to be in the future, meaning a total of 39% expressed an intention to live primarily through their VR identity.
I, too, navigate my life by switching between my role as a regular professional in the physical world and my identity as “Virtual Girl Nem” in the virtual world.
The reasons given for wanting their VR identity to become their main identity in life include: “Because it represents desired self-identity,” “For better self-expression,” and “Because it allows me to live more fun and positive.”
On the other hand, reasons for not wanting their VR identity to be their main identity include: “I want to keep my identities separate,” and “Because the (physical) real world is also important.”
As the number of people spending their daily lives in the metaverse grows, societies begin to form within it. A new era is approaching, where humanity will be faced with the question of how to live in a rapidly developing metaverse society. How do we balance the physical and virtual realities, and navigate between these two worlds? The answer is as diverse as the users themselves.
The metaverse offers a world of diverse lifestyles that have never been seen before. If you are curious, I encourage you to step into this early-stage world and explore it for yourself.
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