Japanese Steam reviews of VRChat: 81.6% positive, with praise focused on gameplay and content
This analysis counts 3,361 Japanese-language reviews on Steam. The sample covers the period from February 2017 to October 2026, with a recommending share of 81.6 percent.
Own research by 648 News. Every figure in this article was counted by us from 3,361 Steam reviews written in Japanese and 1,164 written in English, collected between 2017-02-02 and 2026-10-22.
Overall recommending rates
Players writing reviews in Japanese gave VRChat an 81.6 percent recommending rate across the 3,361 collected reviews. This matches the 81.7 percent positive rating recorded in Steam totals for the Japanese language, which cover 3,350 reviews as of October 23, 2026. The confidence interval for the sample ranges from 80.3 to 82.9 percent. All 3,361 collected reviews were successfully sorted into topics. The median playtime for these reviewers is 422.2 hours.
The numbers
What reviewers praise
Reviewers who recommend the game most frequently discuss gameplay, combat, and core mechanics, appearing in 27.3 percent of recommending reviews. They note that the title offers a vast social playground where users can explore user-created worlds, play mini-games, or simply hang out. Players also praise the amount of content, length, and replayability, which appears in 19.8 percent of recommending reviews. Many highlight the endless variety of avatars and environments. Characters and character design are mentioned in 9.4 percent of recommending reviews. Reviewers appreciate the ability to customize appearances and interact with diverse digital personas. Online play and multiplayer servers appear in 7.2 percent of recommending reviews. Users value the seamless transitions between instances and the ability to join friends globally. Graphics and art direction are discussed in 7.9 percent of recommending reviews. Players note that the visual style adapts well to different creative visions.
このゲームのあまたの「おすすめしません」レビューを見てきた方へ。
To those who have read the many 'Not Recommended' reviews of this game.
What reviewers criticise
Among reviews that do not recommend the game, gameplay, combat, and core mechanics still lead at 27.2 percent of negative reviews. Critics point out that the social nature can feel overwhelming, and some find the lack of traditional objectives limiting. Characters and character design appear in 15.9 percent of negative reviews. Reviewers sometimes describe the community as having immature interpersonal dynamics or unpredictable behavior. Performance, optimization, bugs, and crashes are mentioned in 11.3 percent of negative reviews. Players report frequent freezing, unexpected disconnects, and stability issues that interrupt long sessions. Online play, multiplayer, and servers appear in 11.2 percent of negative reviews. Users note that public lobbies often attract large crowds that can feel chaotic or unmoderated. Amount of content, length, and replayability appear in 9.9 percent of negative reviews. Some reviewers feel that progress depends heavily on external tools and that self-sufficiency requires significant time investment.
独特な評価ばかりが目立ちますが、
Unique evaluations stand out, but,
How English-language reviews differ
Players writing reviews in English gave VRChat a 65.8 percent recommending rate across the 1,164 collected reviews. This sits 15.8 points lower than the Japanese sample, a difference that reaches statistical significance with a p < 0.001. Gameplay, combat, and core mechanics dominate English recommendations at 13.7 percent of positive reviews, followed by online play and multiplayer servers at 8.7 percent. English reviewers who do not recommend the game focus heavily on online play and multiplayer servers, which appears in 13.1 percent of negative reviews. Performance, optimization, bugs, and crashes follows at 7.8 percent of negative reviews. Characters and character design are mentioned in 6.8 percent of negative reviews. Story, scenario, and writing appear in 5.5 percent of negative reviews. The two groups of reviewers differ in both their overall recommending rates and the specific topics they prioritize.
Methodology and sources
Data
Steam user reviews, retrieved with Steam's public review listing between 2017-02-02 and 2026-10-22: 3,361 written in Japanese and 1,164 written in English. Steam's own all-time totals for VRChat were read on 2026-10-23.
How the reviews were classified
Every review was read by a language model, which rated how positive it is, how much concrete detail it gives, and which of 15 fixed topics it talks about. The counts and percentages in this article were then computed from those labels in ordinary code, not by the model. Automatic classification makes mistakes, so single percentages should be read as approximate. Reviews of fewer than 15 characters were not sent to the model; they count as positive or negative from the reviewer's own recommendation and carry no topic.
Limits
People who write a Steam review in Japanese are not a representative sample of everyone who plays in Japan, and the language of a review does not establish where its author lives. Steam's default filter for off-topic review activity was left on, so periods Steam marked as review bombing are excluded from the counts in this article. Reviews that arrived after the retrieval date are not included.
Links
Data from Steam. Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve Corporation.